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ELSMERE ELSEWHERE; 



OR, 



SHIFTS AND MAKESHIFTS, 



LOGICAL AND THEOLOGICAL. 



BY 
A DISCIPLE OF JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, D.D. 



BOSTON: 
WM. MACDONALD & CO. 

1880. 




*S 



^ 



■& 






Copyright, 1889, 
By BENJ. F. BURNHAM. 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

PAGES 

Childhood Theology — Comparison and Countershift — 

Faith and Reason 1-6 

II. 

Composition of the Bible — Canon Fremantle's Criticism 7-10 

III. 

The Tradition Increment — Bernhard Weiss's Representa- 
tive Evangelical View — Origin of the Nativity Legend 
— " Samson," the Sun 11-16 

IV. 

Oral Accretion — Folk-Lore of the Freedmen — " The 

Prayer of the Presidents " — Mythology the Husk . . 17-20 

V. 

Interpretation, Selection, and Emphasis — Paul's Gauge 
of the Soul's Growth — Four Church Developments — 
Theology in Hymnology for Indolent Intellects . . . 21-25 



IV CONTENTS. 

VI. 

PAGES 

Ten Progressive Theological Modifications — (i) Biblical 
Inspiration — Discrepancies — The " One," " Two," 
" Three," " and other women " Accounts Reconcilable 
— Pseudopia and the Resurrection Legend .... 26-29 

VII. 

The Letter and the Spirit — Exemplars 3°-33 

VIII. 

Fetich and Ideal — "A Pure River of Water of Life " . 34-38 

IX. 

(2) Transfer of Emphasis as to Depravity and Penalty . 40-42 

X. 

The Doom of the Majority — Hope the Spur to Attain- 
ment — u Infelix" 43-47 

XL 

(3) Transfer as to Origin of Evil — Mission of Pain . . 48-50 

XII. 
A Personal Devil — Mythological Allusion not of Belief . 51-53 

XIII. 
" Salvation from our selfishness " 54—55 

XIV. 

(4) At-one-ment not Expiation 56—57 



CONTENTS. V 

XV. 

PAGES 

(5) " Revelation is not sealed " — Miracles — Gladstone 

on Thaumaturgy 58-63 

XVI. 

(6) Change as to the Development of the Character and 
Mission of Jesus — Mr. Conway's Tribute 64-66 

XVII. 

Mr. Wason's View that Jesus announced simply an Ethi- 
cal Ideal in Immediate Realization 67-69 

XVIII. 

(7) "Religion" — Spiritual and Humanitarian Work . 70-71 

XIX. 

(8) Change in Less Literal Interpretation of the Precepts 

of Jesus — Supplication only a Vehicle for Aspiration . 72-74 

XX. 

Mr. Barrows on the Puritan's Providence — "Your Father 

knoweth " — Earth bound " about the Feet of God " . 75-79 

XXI. 

Variety not importing Contradiction — Mary and Martha 

— Piety and Morality — Adapting to Hearers' Minds . 80-82 

XXII. 

(9) Change from Subtlety to Simplicity — Mystery not 
Absurdity — Zeal without Knowledge 83-86 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGES 

XXIII. 
Asceticism and Amusements — God's Delights . . . 87-89 

XXIV. 

(10) Diminished Emphasis upon Formal Creeds — 
Cardinal Newman's Concession — Mrs. Ward on 
"Sin and Unbelief" 90-95 

XXV. 

Ideals "in Lieu of Athanasian Creeds" — Not Phylac- 
tery, but Fruit 96-98 

XXVI. 

Tendencies to other Changes — Free Agency and Neces- 
sity — Prophecy — Psychological Research into Pre- 
sentiments — Professor Parker on Visions .... 99-102 

XXVII. 

Public Taste as to Pulpit Oratory — Ascetic Slur — 
"Infidel Unbelief" — Poetical Quotations trimming 
the Prose: "Rest"; "Resignation"; "Retrospec- 
tion"; "Earth suffused by Heaven"; "Only the 
Burden of the Hour"; "The Face of Christ"; 
"Judea's Herald"; "Truth still pleads barefoot at 
the Convent Gate"; "Patience with the Living"; 
"Where Earth and Heaven meet"; "Ad Lucem 
per Te"; "Ultima Veritas"; "Bartimseus "; "The 
Master's Call "; " Greater than we know "; "God's 
love always and everywhere " 103-120 



CONTENTS. VU 



APPENDIX. 

PAGES 

A. Mrs. Ward on the New Reformation 1 21-125 

B. Professor Huxley on the Gadarene Swine Story . 125-134 

C. Professor Huxley on the Gospels, the Disposal of 
the Body of Jesus, and the Unreliability of St. Paul's 
Testimony 134-146 

D. President White on " Diabolism and Hysteria " — 
Second Sight of the Confederate Soldier's Wife — 
A. B. Hill's Presentiment of Death — Seeing in the 
Dark — Cure of a Chicagoan's Hallucination — 
Mind Cures by Messrs. Bulkley and Torrey; by a 
Georgia Negro; by a North Carolina Negress — 
James Hinton's Theory — Dr. Carpenter's Explana- 
tion of Modern Miracles — Lord Herbert's Tale — 
The Induction Theory — Brahmin Sattay's Testi- 
mony — Prayer and Law — Prophecy — Apparition 
Disclosure — "A Life Lesson " — " Beyond " — "A 

Vain Wish" 146-168 

E. Washington's " New Year Aspiration " . . . [169-183] 



11 In a military battle, a general, discovering a portion of his 
position to be disastrously shelled, will countershift accordingly. 
Similarly in a theological battle may the consequences of burst- 
ing bombs be avoided." 

"The leading-strings of the past are dropping from you; 
they are dropping from the world, not wantonly or by chance, 
but in the providence of God. Learn the lesson of your own 
pain, — learn to seek God, not in any single event of past his- 
tory, but in your own soul, — in the constant verifications of 

experience, in the life of Christian love AH things 

change, — creeds and philosophies and outward systems, — but 
God remains." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



o>»<o 



I. 



In childhood our emotions overbalance our 
intellections. Fondness for the sensational is a 
badge of mental immaturity. 

An American boy, just before the last Glori- 
ous Fourth, was given five dollars with which 
to buy a hat and a pair of shoes, with permission 
to spend the remainder in fireworks. He re- 
turned with a fifteen-cent hat, a thirty-five-cent 
pair of shoes, and $4.50 worth of fireworks. 
When this young patriot is a decade or two 
older, his expenditures will be shifted ; more 
will go to beautify his head and fortify his un- 
derstanding, and less be lavished in startling us 
with infernal red and blue blazes. Gradually 
the procession of his ideal requisites of manhood 
will become headed by something less pompous 



2 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

than the tinselled vestments of a strutting drum- 
major. 

As with the individual boy, so with sects, par- 
ties, and peoples on advancing to maturity. 
Theories and dogmas which a century or two 
ago were, by scientists, theologians, or politi- 
cians, deemed of the foremost importance, are 
now let lapse into the background ; and con- 
versely, principles and facts then considered 
insignificant have come to the fore as of com- 
manding indispensability of recognition. 

This change of estimate and the consequent 
shifting of emphasis every fair commentator 
upon current theologies or politics is careful to 
recognize. An unfair demagogue will assert 
that the opposite party adheres to a measure or 
platform plank, although he ought to know that 
it has been so modified in successive conventions 
as to be — the leaders would not say " rotten 
and sagged out," but — "lapsed into innocuous 
desuetude." Nevertheless, we cannot call him 
a liar, for in many a backwoods pulpit or cross- 
roads post-office the measure or dogma may be 
having loud advocacy by some conservative 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 3 

Nasby, some " the-sun-it-do-move " Jasper, who 
has persistently neglected to note, along the 
fleeting years, the changes in the political con- 
ditions of the country or in the personel of the 
field officers in command of Andover reviews. 

The philosophy of these changes is too obvi- 
ous to need more than a single illustration here. 
The discovery published by Copernicus in 1 543, 
by simply shifting the position of our globe in 
space, shook the fabric of Christian theology to 
its foundations. It became difficult to take lit- 
erally "the scheme of salvation/' God's sacrifice 
of his own Son for the advantage of a race located 
on a third-rate planet. Previous facts became 
but allegories. " The ascension of Jesus from a 
mountain lost its value as an historical event 
when the brazen vault of heaven, or the crystal 
sphere on the outer surface of which God sat, 
had been annihilated ; when there was no more 
up or down, and when a body lifted into ether 
would obey the same laws of attraction as a 
meteoric stone." 1 

Some front skirmishers of the sceptic battal- 

1 F. A. Symonds, in the Fortnightly Review. 



4 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

ions are like certain lawyers. Jurors used to be 
amused and amazed at a barrister's obliviousness 
of a fact pertinently testified to, and at his reit- 
erated hammerings upon some point as irrele- 
vant as the chops-and-tomato-sauce message in 
Bardell vs. Pickwick. Colonel Ingersoll told a 
Boston audience that the Bible makes Jehovah 
command certain enormities, and that Orthodox 
Christians believe all the Bible books inspired 
and infallible. The consequent applause could 
hardly be conclusive that Boston culture had 
forgotten that Jesus flatly refused to sanction 
many doctrines deemed by Moses expedient for 
governing the barbarous Israelitish roughs ; for 
instance, the dictum that a man might abandon 
his wife upon certifying that it was through no 
fault of hers ; an outrage Moses had to tolerate 
"for the hardness of their hearts, — in the be- 
ginning it was not so." It will hardly do to 
exclaim here, with Sam Jones, " Silly talk to a 
silly audience. " Both Sam and Bob may oftener 
be witty than silly. But somehow those claquers 
of the Boston-Theatre lecture remind us of the 
audience of the Western auctioneer, who, after 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 5 

vainly soliciting a bid from the motley multitude 
drawn to the vendue less by a desire to purchase 
than to listen to his drolleries, paused, sighed 
comically, and said : " Well, gentlemen, I avum ! 
I've been called the most onery cuss in this 
county ; now all I have to say is that I feel per- 
fectly at home in this crowd." 

Unfortunately such sweeping extemporaneous 
assertions have received greater credence through 
the temporizing non-committalism of clergymen 
timorous to acknowledge concurrence with Da- 
vidson and other writers of the latest edited 
Encyclopedia Britannica; for instance, in that 
the books of Jonah and Daniel were written 
mainly to edify Jewish patriots and perhaps at 
dates properly placing them in the Apocrypha. 
It seems unfortunate that, through alleged pres- 
sure of other topics, the Boston Monday Lec- 
tureship postponed and finally omitted to answer 
a question-box interrogatory on these dates, etc. 
" Free-thinking clap-trap" will not be silenced 
so long as many Christians are so literalistic as 
utterly to ignore Bishop Butler's avowal that 
" Reason is the only faculty we have wherewith 



6 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

to judge concerning anything, even Revelation 
itself " ; that the functions of Reason and Faith 
are co-ordinate ; Faith being defined as fidelity 
to religious conviction, and not merely as a syn- 
onym of credulity. 1 

1 At the recent Methodist Conference in Minneapolis, J. T. 
Lyman, President of the Board of Trade, advocated educating 
the clergy and pushing ahead every man who possesses both 
piety and horse-sense. The following tribute to the liberalism 
of his denomination was applauded : — 

" A man who wants to lead a better life and is seeking God 
is admitted to our communion table. We are not Methodists 
and Presbyterians and Unitarians and Catholics, but children of 
God. There are some of the grandest men in the world in the 
Catholic Church. Are we not all proud of such men as Father 
McGolrick in Minneapolis and Bishop Ireland in St. Paul? A 
business man does not care much for denominations. We do 
not trust a Methodist any quicker than we would a Catholic. 
We are just as liable to be cheated by a Methodist as by a Bap- 
tist or a Universalist." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



II. 



A good introductory standpoint of view of 
the theological field on its new marshalling of 
dogmatic assets is afforded by a recent affirma- 
tion of Canon Freemantle : — 

" In the sphere of criticism we find that the 
Old Testament has undergone a great change. 
The successive labors of Ewald, Graf, and Well- 
hausen in Germany ; of Kuenen in Holland ; of 
Reuss among French, and R. Smith among Eng- 
lish critics, have won the general assent of schol- 
ars — even of men of such conservative leanings 
as Delitzsch in Germany ; of Briggs in America ; 
and of the Oxford Hebraists, Driver and Cheyne. 
Let us endeavor to give a succinct account of 
these results. 

11 The Pentateuch is now held to be of Mosaic 
origin only in the sense of incorporating histor- 
ical and legal elements which a tradition, partly 
but not wholly trustworthy, had handed down 



8 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

as connected with Moses. In its present state 
it consists mainly of three elements: i. The 
early documents, which combine two sources, 
one of which uses the name of Jehovah, the 
other Elohim ; 2. The Deuteronomic ; and 3. 
The Priestly : these three elements are repre- 
sented in successive casts of the law by, 1. The 
Decalogue and the book of laws in Exodus xx.- 
xxiii. ; 2. The book of Deuteronomy ; 3. The 
book of Leviticus ; and took shape in writings, 
the first about 800 B.C. ; the second at the time 
of Manasseh or Josiah ; the third during the 
period between Ezekiel and Ezra. In these 
three periods the early documents were succes- 
sively rehandled, so that the first four books 
bear traces of the later influences, first of the 
Deuteronomist and secondly of the Levitical 
writers." * 

After adverting to the books of Joshua, Judges, 
and Kings, Canon Freemantle's report proceeds : 
" The books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah 
form one work written under priestly influence 
long after the time of Ezra. The book of Esther 

1 Fortnightly Review, 1887. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 9 

is a very late work, its claims to be placed in 
the Canon being disputed by the rabbis down 
to the time of the Christian era. The Psalms 
are of many ages and authors, those actually 
written by David being limited to a very few, 
possibly the eighteenth alone. The Proverbs 
belong to Solomon only in the sense in which 
the Psalms belong to David. Job is of quite 
uncertain date and origin, while Ecclesiastes 
belongs to the later Persian era, and the Song 
of Songs to the days of the Northern Kingdom." 
After locating the remaining Old-Testament 
books, Canon Freemantle proceeds: "The re- 
searches relating to the Synoptic Gospels have 
made it clear that they are not independent 
accounts, but have a common origin either in an 
oral or a written tradition which was variously 
handled ; that in all probability Mark was the 
oldest and Luke the latest of the three, but 
that the title 'according to' St. Matthew or St. 
Mark permits of the hypothesis that they passed 
through a rehandling in a later generation of 
their disciples, and that the same is highly prob- 
able in the case of the Fourth Gospel, which, 



IO ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

however, many believe to have been wholly- 
composed in the second century by some disci- 
ple or successor of St. John ; that the Acts of 
the Apostles cannot be wholly relied on for the 
details of the history ; . . . that the pastoral 
epistles cannot be treated with any certainty ls 
having been written by St. Paul himself, and 
the epistle to the Hebrews is almost certainly 
by another, though one in sympathy with him." 1 

" As to the unity of the four Gospels, notwithstanding their 
diverse characteristics," see the sermon of Dr. J. F. Clarke, 
preached Feb. 5, 1888, on "The Mind of Christ: Five Sources 
of our Knowledge." It will probably be in "The Disciples' 
Pulpit " series, now being published by George H. Ellis, Boston. 
See also in The Nineteenth Century for May, 1889, Dr. Wace's 
article "Christianity and Agnosticism"; especially the portion 
commenting upon Holtzman's remark {Lehrbuch, p. 372), that 
" in the so-called Sermon on the Mount (Matt, v.-vii.) we find 
constructed on the basis of a real discourse of fundamental sig- 
nificance a skilfully articulated mosaic work." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. II 



III. 

Let us now take an American evangelical 
standpoint of view. In answer to a question- 
box interrogatory concerning the dates, genu- 
ineness, and methods of composition of the 
Gospels the Boston Monday Lectureship has 
held up the writings of Bernhard Weiss thereon 
as voicing the present most advanced evangeli- 
cal thought. Weiss, both in his Life of Christ 
and in his more recent "Lehrbuch," etc., holds 
that Matthew wrote about 67 a.d., in Aramaic, 
the " Logia " of which Papias speaks (namely, a 
collection of sayings of Jesus) ; that soon after 
this, probably in 69, Mark wrote his Gospel, 
using as his sources his own reminiscences of 
Peter's preaching and Matthew's Logia ; that 
soon after the destruction of Jerusalem (70 
a.d.) our Greek Matthew was composed by 
combining Mark's Gospel and Matthew's Logia 
and adding some new material from tradition ; 



12 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

and finally that Luke, not later than 80, wrote 
the Gospel which bears his name, on the basis 
of the Gospel of Mark, Matthew's Logia, and 
another documentary source, but in entire inde- 
pendence of our canonical Matthew. Weiss 
assigns the completion of the collection of the 
Gospel writings to the third quarter of the sec- 
ond century, although he thinks the four canon- 
ical Gospels were used by Justin Martyr. 

In a naively apologetic way Weiss concedes 
discrepancies. Thus in the first volume of his 
Life of Christ he says that in Matthew i. 8, the 
omission of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah before 
Ozias is caused by the resemblance between the 
Greek form "Ahazia" and the name " Ozias. " 
As to this mistake of the Matthew prefacer, in 
putting at fourteen the generations of the royal 
house between David and the Captivity (in- 
stead of the seventeen — indeed eighteen with 
Jehoiakin — in II. Kings xii. and II. Chronicles 
xxiv.), Weiss adds that " quite in the spirit of 
the age, the evangelist beholds in this even 
number (2X7) a token of the divine guidance 
exercised in the history of this house, an indica- 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 1 3 

tion in the fourteenth generation after the exile, 
of the time having come when the last heir of 
David's line should re-establish the kingdom in 
Israel, or an indication of Jesus who formed the 
close of the genealogy being the Messiah in 
whom all the promises would be fulfilled in ac- 
cord with the divine plan which determined the 
history of the house." This hardly enhances 
one's confidence in the prefacer's immunity 
from the bias of Jewish patriotism (not to say 
bigotry) ; in a word, in his credibility. 

If, then, the Matthew prefacer was not super- 
naturally restrained from errors, and if Weiss 
cannot tell just when the oral traditions got 
crystallized into the Gospel canon, how far may 
we credit the story of the Nativity, with its ac- 
cessories of the star-heralding, the visions, and 
the angel-chorus ? Indeed, how far credit the 
accounts of miracles ; e.g., that of the healing of 
Peters mayhem upon the ear of Malchus ? I 
know no better answer than that of Jeremy 
Taylor : " If Reason contradict an article, it is 
not of the household of Faith." With analysis 
of the narrative and synthesis of extraneous his- 



14 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

torical facts, much may be determined as to the 
origin and extent of an increment of tradition. 

Take, for instance, the story of the star and 
the Magi. The ancient world regarded stars 
and meteors as bulletins hung in the sky for 
information or guidance of mankind. Examina- 
tions by Pingre and others disclose that in the 
spring of the year of Rome 750, there was visi- 
ble in the latitude of Palestine a comet of ex- 
traordinary magnitude. Kepler and later astron- 
omers, including Encke and Airy, declare that 
there had also been visible there, two years pre- 
viously, a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and 
Mars ; and in u.c. 747, a conjunction of the two 
former planets, which happens in that point of 
the Zodiac (Pisces) but once in about 794 years. 

The Babylonish Captivity having spread the 
Messianic expectation eastward, it is probable 
that Persian astrologers, apt to consider any 
unusual thing in the heavens a premonition of 
some extraordinary occurrence, would look to 
Judea for any revolution which the phenomenon 
might portend; and thus "wise men of the 
East " be thereupon, in u.c. 750, conveyed in 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 1 5 

caravan to Jerusalem, where their presence (es- 
pecially if the city was filled with provincial 
visitors drawn thither for tribal enrolment), 
would be an episode of memorable interest, and 
a partial basis for the legend of the star of 
Bethlehem. " It may be," remarks Dr. Hedge, 
"a poem of some Christian writer of the first 
century, or it may be one of those traditions of 
unconscious authorship which gather around 
extraordinary persons or events. Whether 
poem or tradition, the essential beauty of the 
legend has sufficed to secure its perpetuity." 
Even if this conjunction theory were unsound, 
a similar illustration may be supplied by the 
possibility of a variable star like that seen by 
Tycho Brahe in Cassiopeia. 

As to the substitution of Bethlehem for Naz- 
areth, the elaborate discussion in the appendix 
of Canon Farrar's " Life of Christ" (Cassel edi- 
tion), and in Dr. McCosh's " Christianity and 
Positivism" cannot render us oblivious that the 
Mark and the John Gospels confirm the primi- 
tive tradition of early residence at Nazareth, and 
that the Matthew prefacer virtually confesses 



l6 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

that, in order to make out his case that Jesus is 
the Messiah, he adapts his location to an old 
saying (Micah v. 2), " out of Bethlehem Ephra- 
tah shall come a ruler," etc. 

Take a single other illustration. The name 
Samson ("solar") seems to have been derived 
from that of the sun, among peoples who wor- 
shipped him as a deity. His rays were all-pow- 
erful to cheer and bless or to smite ; but when 
he was shorn of them, by an overspreading cloud 
or by night, his strength departed from him. It 
is easy to see how the story of his power, when 
the meaning of the name and the application 
were lost, could be wrought up into our heroic 
Bible legend. It is in accordance with such 
transformations that Max Miiller says " mythol- 
ogy is language forgetting herself." x 

1 See "The Tree of Mythology, its Growth and Fruitage," 
by Charles DeB. Mills; published by C. W. Barden, Syracuse, 
N.Y., 1889. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. \J 



IV. 



We need not resort to Strauss's theory of the 
mythus 1 to understand the growth, even nowa- 
days, of tradition, folk-lore, and mythology. The 
Freedmen's tale of an episode — impossible of 
occurrence between the files of soldiers — that 
John Brown, in going from the jail to the scaf- 
fold, met and kissed a negro child, will probably 
never become quite extinct, — the art of printing 
and District Attorney Hunter's statement to the 
contrary notwithstanding. Edwin Mead tells us 
that the daughter of the postmaster at Scrooby, 
showing the place on the river Idle where the 
Pilgrims launched their boats for the Humber, 
confidently asserted that it was from this point 
the Mayflower sailed. 2 

1 See Appendix " A." 

2 It is a familiar historic fact that George Washington, when 
a boy, penned and adhered to certain rational and noble resolu- 
tions or aspirations. A few years ago there appeared " A New- 



1 8 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

Another illustration of the accretive effect of 
a narrator's unconscious bias and consequent 
misplaced emphasis may be found in a volume 
of the Boston Monday Lectureship, entitled 
"Transcendentalism." On page 119, Theodore 
Parker is correctly quoted as writing : " I find 
'sins/ i.e., conscious violations of right, but no 
'sin,' i.e., no conscious and intentional prefer- 
ence of wrong (as such) to right (as such), no 
condition of enmity against God." x But at the 
top of page 121, the lecturer omits the "as such " 
and declares that Theodore Parker says " there 
is no such thing as preference of wrong to right," 
adding : " If there were to be edited an edition 

Year Aspiration " as originating with Washington, but enlarged 
by Thomas Jefferson. Finally, there appeared an elaborate 
theistic petition to " Our Father who art the Infinite Soul over 
All," etc., studiously avoiding all objective supplication; it pur- 
ported to embody the Washington and Jefferson matter with 
accretions by Abraham Lincoln, and was entitled, " The Prayer 
of the Presidents." As it has the merit of tersely setting forth 
principles to which both Evangelical and Liberal readers assent, 
and (aside from any tradition prank) illustrates certain points 
in this essay and in " Robert Elsmere," it is hereto added in 
Appendix " E." 

1 " Life of Parker," Vol. I., p. 150. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. ig 

of Shakespeare according to this principle, how 
much would be left of the naturalness of that 
mirror of humanity ? " Of course Parker would 
respond that the Macbeths did not love murder ; 
they craved the crown of Scotland, and murdered 
Duncan as a most disagreeable alternative ; they 
favored not murder "as such," but as a means. 
This lapsus of Mr. Cook was, of course, inadver- 
tent, for he well knows that nothing is more un- 
strategic in theological warfare than misrepre- 
sentation. 

It is found that nothing is lost by frankly 
recognizing the results of the tradition incre- 
ments. Even so ingenious a writer as E. Ste- 
phens gains no respect to his dogmatic animus 
by his satirical animadversion (p. 22) upon 
Renan's omission to state more conjecturally 
the passage as to manuscripts of the four Gos- 
pels than to assert that "the poor man who 
has but one book wishes that it may contain all 
that is dear to his heart. These little books 
were lent, and each one transcribed in his copy 
the words and the parables he found elsewhere 
which touched him. The most beautiful thing 



20 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

in the world has thus proceeded from an obscure 
and popular elaboration." Nor by his ironical 
reply (p. 39), that perhaps the Supreme Author 
of all science lacked the ability to write on the 
tablets of the apostles' memories, etc. Nor by 
his begging the question on the supernatural (in 
reply to Renan's question, " Is it John the son 
of Zebedee who is able to write in Greek these 
lessons of abstract metaphysics ? ") by remark- 
ing that " Renan forgets the classical and 
philosophic training John got on the day of 
Pentecost." 1 

Nor is mythology to be slighted as useless. 
What though much of the Old Testament and 
Apocrypha be now obsolete for present practical 
purposes ? We love and reverence an aged, en- 
feebled mother for what she has been and has 
done, whatever now her inefficiency. Who 
knows that the New Testament writings would 
have been preserved to us, had they contained 
no wonder-stories ? 

" Without the shielding husk, though now so sere, 
We ne'er had had the priceless golden ear. 1 ' 

1 See Appendix " B." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 21 



V. 



It seems, then, that right interpretation de- 
pends largely on right elimination, and this, on 
right discrimination of tinged matter. Before 
proceeding to note the changing use of the 
words " inspired," " revelation, " etc., we shall 
more intelligently observe how rational selection 
and combination, and consequently shifted em- 
phasis, have lately tended to rectify theological 
doctrine, if we first glance a moment at some 
earlier phases, beginning with what St. Paul, 
the original great representative of Christ, used 
particularly to emphasize. For the history of 
ecclesiasticism is but a record of departure from 
Paul and of return to him. He states to the 
Ephesians four dimensions of a soul rooted and 
grounded in the love of Christ, each symboliz- 
ing some spiritual movement, namely: " height," 
standing for aspiration or the ascent of the soul 
towards God; " depth," symbolizing thought. 



22 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

which goes to the roots of things, seeking for 
the cause of all events ; " length," meaning 
progress, development, an advance from truth 
to more truth, from goodness to something 
better; and " breadth," signifying expansion, 
comprehension, fulness, completeness. 

This gauge has lately been applied to the 
history of Christianity substantially as follows : 
"The early church was the church of aspiration. 
This tendency, pursued exclusively, led to mys- 
ticism. Men had visions, went into trances, 
became anchorites and solitaires. The next 
movement of the church was in the direction of 
depth or intellectual inquiry, as to the nature of 
God, the person of Christ, the generation of the 
Son, the precession of the Holy Spirit, fate and 
free will. It became a church of speculation 
and dogmatism, and instead of love it gave the 
world creeds and formulas. The next move- 
ment, the Lutheran reformation, came in the 
interest of progress ; it meant to add length to 
the height and depth ; to retain aspiration and 
speculation, and also to advance free thought. 
And its fourth movement appears to be towards 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 23 

breadth. The broad church, instead of under- 
taking to define Christ, will simply accept his 
guidance, live his spirit; will say, 'Grace be 
with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ 
sincerely ' ; will have more piety than sancti- 
mony. Prayer will be not an oration delivered 
to a monarch, but the talk of a child to its 
father and mother. The narrow church has 
taught that there are only two places in the 
world beyond, heaven and hell ; one for the 
good man, the other for the sinner. But the 
broad church will teach that in our Father's 
house are many mansions; that there are homes 
there as well as here for every variety of char- 
acter, ability, and state of development." 1 

Of course this consummation must come 
through liberalized leaders rather than through 
the indolent-minded masses ; it is easier for 
mediocre minds to conform than to reform. 
They are not unfrequently swayed away from 

1 Dr. J. F. Clarke in a sermon in the Church of the Disciples, 
at Boston, 1886; probably to be found in "The Disciples' 
Pulpit," already or soon to be published by Geo. H. Ellis, 
Boston. 



24 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

free thought by the sneering assertion of some 
pretentious preacher as to " Poor Tom Paine," 
" an infidel death-bed," etc. Their total idea of 
evolution is derived from some slurring misrep- 
resentation of Darwin or of protoplasm, and is 
never uplifted by patient reading and reflection. 
They devote many an hour to singing in glib 
fugue and gleeful chorus such shallow, theology- 
overladen poetry as — 

" If you want to make old Satan run, 
Just shoot him with the gospel gun. 
Play on the golden ha-ha-harp ! 
O halle-halle-halle-hallelujah," — 

never suspecting that the words " diversion" 
and " depravity" may have some literal relation- 
ship in a vestry audience as well as in a theatre 
auditorium. Nor would they suspect any latent 
satire in the current newspaper advertisement 
(whose author possibly ignores development as 
a salvable factor in the attainment of spiritually 
excellent character), namely: "Get the best and 
cheapest ! Salvation Oil relieves in the twin- 
kling of an eye." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 2$ 

Such are the zealots who, even in what they 
name reflection, have so habitually allowed emo- 
tion to drown out intellection, that the lapse of 
years finds them still in the infant class in theo- 
logical history and in capacity for continuity of 
ratiocination. This, however, does not in the 
least seem to impair their capacity as occasional 
claquers ; they are very serviceable for the Ap- 
plause brackets when the Monday Boanerges 
dilates into some sweeping allegation like the 
one at page 114 of the Transcendentalism vol- 
ume of the series, namely, " the history of 
Boston scepticism begins in the fact that Har- 
vard College never had a President Dwight to 
take the poison of our French period out of her 
veins." 1 

1 It would seem also that a great abstract metaphysician may 
be betrayed by bigotry into irrationalism. The late Princeton 
President is reported to have publicly made the inconsiderate 
remark : " Unitarianism is wholly dead, and only waits for a 
decent burial." 



26 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



VI. 



(i) In proceeding to consider ten especially 
notable progressive theological modifications, 
the first to be mentioned is a changed applica- 
tion of the word " inspired" to the Bible. The 
old verbal inspiration theory would require us to 
assume that from Genesis to Revelation there 
are no actual contradictions ; that the minute 
directions in Leviticus about lamps, trumpets, 
unclean beasts, divorce, boring a servant's ear, 
etc., all have the same inspiration as the Sermon 
on the Mount ; that God walked in the garden 
and repented that he had made man ; that Jonah 
lived three days within a whale ; that somebody 
was inspired by the Infinite Being to imprecate 
against his enemy's innocent children vagabond- 
ism and beggary. 1 In England Christian rulers, 
relying on Exodus xxii. 18 ("Thou shalt not 
suffer a witch to live"), have caused men and 

1 Psalm cix. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 2J 

women to be burned alive. In France, Louis 
XIV., relying on Mark xvi. 16 ("He that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned "), had men and 
women tortured and hung for attending Protes- 
tant worship. In America, merchant princes, 
relying on Paul's request to Philemon to take 
back the bond-servant Onesimus, have sustained 
the slave-trade, the fugitive-slave bill, and the 
overseer's lash, forsooth to christianize Africans. 
There are still many of the ilk who deem it 
disloyalty to "faith" to search the Scriptures 
with eyes unclosed against discrepancies. An 
old lady acquaintance of the writer had read 
the Bible through verbatim several times before 
discovering the contradictory footings of Joab's 
enumeration of Israel and Judah in II. Samuel 
xxiv. and I. Chronicles xxi. ; or the contradiction 
between II. Samuel xxiv. 24 (fifty shekels of 
silver) and I. Chronicles xxi. 25 (six hundred 
shekels of gold); or that between I. Samuel xxi. 
2 (Ahimelech) and Mark ii. 26 (Abiathar) ; or 
between Numbers xxv. 9 (24,000) and I. Cor- 
inthians x. 8 (23,000) ; or between Matthew iv. 
(pinnacle episode preceding the kingdom show^ 



28 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

ing) and Luke iv. (mountain scene first) ; or be- 
tween Matthew x. 10 (take no staves) and Mark 
vi. 8 (take a staff only). Other discrepancies 
she had solved : e.g., between Matthew xxi. 3 
("them ") and Mark xxi. 7 ("the colt"), observ- 
ing that Mark does not say the mother was left ; 
between Matthew xxv. 14 ("ten talents") and 
Luke xix. 1 3 (" five pounds "), that Jesus gave the 
parable differently at different times ; between 
Matthew xxviii. 2, also Mark xvi. 5 (one angel 
seated), Luke xxiv. 4 (two standing), and John 
xx. 12 (two seated), that different times are 
referred to. As to the statement in John xx. 1 
(one woman), Matthew xxviii. 1 (two), Mark 
xvi. 1 (three), and Luke xxiv. 10 (three "and the 
other women "), she had evolved a solution sub- 
stantially like Robinson's, 1 as follows : The two 
Marys, Joanna, Salome, and other women arrive 
together further to embalm the body. Then 
Mary Magdalene runs to tell Peter and John 
her apprehension that it is stolen. Then the 
two angels appear to the others, who thereupon 
go to the city to tell the disciples and are met 

1 Bib. Sacra, 1845, P- 1 %T- 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 29 

by Jesus. After Peter and John come and go, 
Mary Magdalene returns, sees the angels, and 
is accosted by Jesus. The good lady had never 
heard of the explanation given by the Dutch 
School, 1 although her pastor was by no means 
ignorant of pseudopia. 

1 " Peter's fervent and excitable temperament, acting upon his 
deep sense of the injury he had done to his beloved Master and 
his longing to receive assurance of forgiveness, might well throw 
him into just such a state of exaltation as might make him see 
the form he loved rise up before him, with an expression of 
exalted tenderness and generous forgiveness. . . . The tried 
attachment and touching fidelity of these women to Jesus, work- 
ing upon the more sensitive female system, would make them 
eminently susceptible of such impressions; and it seems more 
probable that tradition would gradually substitute Peter for the 
women than that they should have usurped his place. 

" In general, we may be pretty sure that the oldest tradition, 
whether preserved in the Epistle to the Corinthians or in Mat- 
thew, knew nothing of any words pronounced by the risen 
Christ, when he appeared. These form but one of many de- 
viations and accretions. . . . The appearances of Jesus are 
transferred to Jerusalem,*with the view of making the scene of 
his defeat that of his triumph; they are placed upon the third 
day, as while Jesus passed on high; they become more and more 
material, as generally do legends. Special circumstances and 
sayings were from time to time added, till the whole was ex- 
panded into a second life on earth of several weeks' duration." 
— See The Life of Lives, etc., pp. 250-2; 260-6. 



30 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



VII. 

As in poetry, wherein the letter may be fic- 
titious while the spirit may be the profoundest 
wisdom, so in religion, even under a supersti- 
tion there may be an original element of truth, 
there may be an exaggeration of some genuine 
experience. "What matters it that the letter 
of Dante's theology and his pictures of paradise 
and hell are based on superstition? The letter 
was false, but the spirit of justice, of human 
tenderness, of faith in absolute right, makes his 
immortal story vibrate in human hearts to-day. 
And because the words of Jesus were inspired 
by still loftier realities, and are the outcome of 
a profounder insight, he could say, ' Heaven 
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall 
not pass away."' 1 Yea, even passing from Pal- 
estine and the apostles to Rome and the Chris- 
tian Fathers, we see that, — 

1 Dr. J. F. Clarke : Sermon in the Church of the Disciples, 1886. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 3 I 

" Where grief had come to lay its burdens down, 

Where heavenly longing sighed its rapturous breath, 
Where Faith in visions saw the victor's crown 

Awaiting chastened spirits after death, 
There has the spot where Error lived and died 
By man's deep reverence been sanctified. " 1 

Thus while we find in the New Testament 
traces of the limitations which belong to each 
writer's individual mind, and contradictions 
utterly inconsistent with the theory that every 
word was expressly communicated by God, we 
also perceive that the authors were thoroughly, 
and in no common way, inspired with the truth 
and spirit of Jesus ; with a depth of conviction 
unexampled in any literature. For nearly twenty 
centuries their statements, their thoughts, have 
been the objects of universal scrutiny, of the 
sharpest investigation. Yet these are still, as 
they were at first, the fountain of refreshment 
to thinking, feeling man. In them we think we 
have eternal life. They present us Christianity, 
not as consisting so much of minute rules, defi- 

1 Abba Gould Woolson; Dedication Ode at Concord, N.H., 
1879. 



32 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

nite ceremonies, or distinct articles of belief, as 
of ideas, principles, and truths which we are left 
to apply ourselves. By mistaking this, many 
errors have been committed. A newspaper 
lately offered a reward of $1000 to any one who 
would prove infant baptism from Scripture. A 
like reward might safely be offered to any one 
who would prove from Scripture that Sunday is 
the Sabbath. 

But apply the word " inspiration " in a plain 
natural sense, and much of sceptical criticism of 
the Bible falls pointless. Thus for instance, the 
spontaneity of Gov. Andrew's Thanksgiving 
Proclamation of 1861 has been called " an in- 
spiration. " The writer to the Hebrews sum- 
mons the great names of Abraham and others 
as examples of faith and devotion, and surround- 
ing his persecuted brethren with this band of 
saintly witnesses, encompassing them as a cloud, 
incites them to run with patience the race set 
before them. 

Thus, as Dr. J. F. Clarke has pithily remarked, 
inspiration may be a thing recommunicable and 
not necessarily supernatural. One of the noble 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 33 

army of martyrs, Algernon Sidney, wrote in an 
album in Copenhagen two Latin lines : — 

" Manns haec inimica tyrannis 
Ense petit piacidam sub libertate quietem" 

the second of which, taken by Massachusetts as 
its motto, is familiar to every Bostonian passing 
the Washington-Street end of the Old State 
House, and they are known to mean, " This 
hand, hostile to tyrants, seeks by the sword calm 
peace under the shelter of freedom." When 
under that motto went forth our youth to pre- 
serve the Union and to deliver an enslaved race, 
the soul of Sidney went with them as compan- 
ion and inspiration. 



34 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



VIII. 

It is not then to be wondered at that the 
Bible, being a precious shrine of memorials of 
great and good members of our human brother- 
hood, — yea, of the sweetest one of all, — should 
be cherished even to the extent of extravagantly 
zealous adoration, making it almost a fetich. 
We all know what may be embodied even in a 
piece of bunting fastened to a staff. Among 
the flags in the Massachusetts Capitol there 
stands a solitary flagstaff from which the stars 
and stripes were torn away at Fort Wagner, but 
which was held by the colored standard-bearer 
when he was shot down. He did not let the 
flag fall, but clung to it, and, said he, " It never 
touched the ground, boys ! " To him the flag 
was a living thing, representing the freedom of 
his race and the safety of the Union. 

The extreme reverence of the masses for the 
Bible is often rather peculiarly exhibited in some 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 35 

prayer meetings and Salvation Army reviews. 
A merit is attached to feeling and to " faith" 
(used almost in the sense of credulity) which 
savors of blindness to the truth embodied in 
Murray's aphorism, " Emotion is the bud, not 
the flower" (of piety and character). One is 
reminded of Emanuel Deutsch's remark about 
Renan's " Les Apotres," "We yield to the spell 
and shut out thinking." 

A gentleman attracted by a notice of an intro- 
ductory "service of song," entered the H 

Street Church, Boston, and, after the regular 
conference meeting had well progressed, arose 
and said : " I deem it my duty, although a 
stranger here, to testify that I feel uplifted and 
blest in partaking of the good spirit of this meet- 
ing." Then referring to the " salvation " (men- 
tioned by a prior speaker) he was proceeding to 
quote : — 

" From sin itself, and not the pain, 
That warns us of its chafing chain," — 

when a frowning elderly man interrupted him 
with singing ; and one or two other old voices 



$6 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

joining, the stranger sat down. At the close 
of the meeting several of the more intelligent 
came to him, expressing regrets at the bigoted 
interruption as a "song service" supplement 
not approved of by four-fifths of those present. 
He has ever since more carefully avoided un- 
hitching "salvation" from verbatim scripture. 

The great mass of men are swept forward by 
the trends of tradition and of public opinion. 
In this regard the Bible has been compared to a 
river ; each man's better self — his good angel — 
shows him therein "a pure river of water of life." 
The currents of thought we call faith because 
they do not usually depend on agreement or 
reasoning, but follow profound attractions from 
above the soul or from within. The backward 
counter-current is unbelief and denial ; the little 
whirlpools between represent the hesitations of 
a mind uncertain what to believe. 

The late Dr. J. F. Clarke, 1 adverting to its cur- 
rent of religious life, calls the Bible a mighty 
river, with an unknown source in far-off table- 
lands of Asia. When we first see it, Abraham 

1 In a sermon in the Church of the Disciples, in 1886. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 37 

and his family are floating on the surface of the 
little stream, bringing their ancestral traditions 
about the creation of the world and an ancient 
deluge. It soon receives affluents from Egypt 
on one side, from Assyria and Babylonia on the 
othef. The central stream is pure, the worship 
of one supreme God, the wise, merciful, just 
friend of Abraham and his family. But anon 
there are counter-currents, barbarities inherited 
from heathenism. Another affluent comes in ; 
Moses teaches justice between man and man. 
Others swell its waters, adding psalms of love, 
trust, praise, aspiration. The river broadens 
into the great prophetic teachings concerning 
the majestic, spiritual and infinite character of 
God, and the worthlessness of mere ceremony 
and ritual. Presently it foams over cataracts, 
lashed by conquest, captivity, oppression. It 
comes out again between wide prairies of peace- 
ful human life, till at last it becomes the great 
river of Christian faith and love. 

Merely because the Ohio and the Mississippi 
sometimes overflow, or are too low for naviga- 
tion, we do not doubt that they have peopled 



38 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

the central valley of the continent with myriads 
of happy homes. All sensible people take from 
the Bible good and pure nourishment for the 
soul and let the rest go ; like Emerson's humble- 
bee — 

" Seeing only what is fair, 

Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care, 

Leave the chaff and take the wheat." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 39 



IX. 



(2) Secondly, there has been a transfer of 
pulpit emphasis on the subject of depravity and 
penalty. Formerly it was preached that the 
heart even of a child could not become right 
until the victim of Adam should have a convic- 
tion that it was an enemy of God, had never 
done anything right in all its life, was living 
under the wrath of God every moment, and was 
justly doomed to everlasting hell-fire. A horri- 
ble hymn of Dr. Watts, 1 painting God like a 
Hindu demon, used to be read and sung : — 

" Think, O my soul, the dreadful day 
When this incensed God 
Shall rend the sky and burn the sea, 
And fling his wrath abroad ! 

" Tempests of angry fire shall roll, 
To blast the rebel worm, 
And beat upon his naked soul 
In one eternal storm." 

1 Probably written before he became a Unitarian. 



40 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

Thereupon Theodore Parker declared that 
"if a single soul be destined to eternal doom, 
either Deity is defective in power, and cannot 
prevent it ; or in love, and will not prevent it ; 
or in wisdom, and does not know how to pre- 
vent it." Since then, the warning stress has 
been laid less against the consequences of evil- 
doing than on evil-doing itself. The advanced 
thought is not only that right is expedient and 
wrong disastrous, but that right and wrong are 
eternally hostile, and that this distinction is 
rooted in the very nature of God and man ; that 
conscience is the voice of God in the soul, 
teaching that God himself is infinite holiness ; 
that all right-doing brings us nearer to him, 
that all wrong-doing separates us from him ; 
not that he punishes us in an outward hell, but 
that the real evil of sin is that we, abusing the 
great gift of freedom, turn our faces away from 
the eternal source of joy and peace. 

This tendency to discriminate as to evil- 
doers is observable in the " Put-yourself-in-his- 
place " disposition ; in the welcome accorded to 
publications recognizing the hereditary trans- 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 41 

mission of qualities, and allowing for conse- 
quent personal idiosyncrasies ; for instance, Dr. 
Combe's treatise on "The Constitution of 
Man," Dr. Holmes' story of " Elsie Venner" 
(whose mother had encountered a rattlesnake), 
Miss Phelps' story of " Jack " (son of a drunken 
sailor), and certain pen-pictures by Dickens and 
others. Especially may be cited the rather 
democratic enunciation in Thackeray's " His- 
tory of Henry Esmond " : — 

" Is it the Lord Mayor going in state to mince pies and 
the Mansion House? Is it poor Jack of Newgate's pro- 
cession, with the sheriff and the javelin-men conducting 
him in his last journey to Tyburn? I look into my heart 
and think I am as good as my Lord Mayor, and I know I 
am as bad as Tyburn Jack. Give me a chain and a red 
gown and a pudding before me, and I could play the part 
of an Alderman very well and sentence Jack after dinner. 
Starve me, keep me from books and honest people, edu- 
cate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on 
Hounslow Heath and a purse before me, and I will take it. 
1 And I shall be deservedly hanged,"' say you. I don't say 
no. I can't but accept the world as I find it, including a 
rope's end, as long as it is in fashion." 

It is refreshing to turn from the thunderation 
of some Boanerges like Elder Knapp or Peter 



42 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

Cartwright to a late utterance of a good Metho- 
dist bishop on the " A. B. conundrum. " Bishop 
Foster says : — 

" If the awful thought could once take possession of my 
mind that the whole heathen world must, of necessity, be 
lost simply because they are heathen, I would not send 
them a gospel which reveals such a God. That grim 
thought alone would shut out all hope for the world and 
make eternity itself a dungeon, no difference who might 
be saved. For how could any rational creature enjoy even 
a heaven with a God whose government could permit such 
a stain of shame and dishonor, of cruelty and injustice. wl 

Discussion used to be rife on the doctrine of 
" reprobation " after death. Now it is " proba- 
tion " after death, with a more merciful implica- 
tion. 

1 The Independent. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 43 



X. 



Granted that Article XVIII. is not yet ex- 
punged from the Thirty-Nine ; namely, that they 
are to be held accursed who presume that a man 
diligent of lawful life may be saved without the 
name of Jesus. Granted that only a decade 
ago there was quite a ripple over Mr. Beecher's 
Minnesota sermon wherein he remarked that 
"as to worshipping a God who damns men 
through all creation, I cannot worship the devil, 
and that is only a demoniacal God." Neverthe- 
less, is there not in the evangelical rank and 
file increasing sympathy with the sentiments of 
Dr. W. H. Ryder's open letter to Evangelist D. 
L. Moody, and of Editor S. J. Barrows' book on 
" The Doom of the Majority " ? — a broadening 
smile at the rejoinder of the Scotch literalist 
(a debater with whom had remarked : " But ac- 
cording to your view nobody is likely to be 
saved except yourself and your brother Alexan- 



44 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

der!"), "Aweel, I am nae sure aboot Sandy, 
nather!" 

A rather preferable type of theologian is indi- 
cated in the words of James Martineau : " I look 
for ultimate unity, not from the world's coming 
round to me while I stand still, but from a con- 
verging movement of thought affecting all faith- 
ful men toward a centre of repose as yet invisi- 
ble." Or in those of H. W. Longfellow : — 

" 1 hear the sermon upon sin, 
With threatenings of the last account, 
And all translated in the air, 
Reach me as but our Lord's dear prayer, 
And as the Sermon on the Mount." 

Any effort to imagine that every prayer-book 
proprietor actually believes in the doom of the 
millions majority would only incline us to re- 
peat the gentle old Quaker's euphemism to 
his wife : " All the world is queer except 
thee and me ; and thee is a little queer." 
One needs not be very astute to observe that, 
more and more, evangelical creed-reciters are 
whispering "Amen!" to the sweet lines of Dr. 
John Greenleaf Whittier : — 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 45 

" I see the wrong that round me lies, 
I feel the guilt within ; 
I hear with groan and travail cries r 

The world confess its sin. 

" Yet in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fixed stake my spirit clings : 
I know that God is good ! 

" Not mine to look when cherubim 
And seraphs may not see ; 
But nothing can be good in him 
Which evil is in me." 

Before quitting consideration of this transfer 
of pulpit emphasis from futurity to presence of 
compensation, I am reluctant to omit a cheer- 
ing observation made by J. W. Chadwick under 
the text, " We are saved by hope." After ad- 
verting to the lament of the aged Frenchman, 

" He never saw gay Carcassone. 
Who has not known a Carcassone? 1 ' 

and to the verse in Dr. Whittier's " Vanishers," 

" Doubt who may, O friend of mine, 
Thou and I have seen them too ; 



46 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

On before, with beck and sign, 
Still they glide, and we pursue " ; 

and otherwise recognizing the pathetic fact that 
many things we hope we do not here attain, Mr. 
Chadwick says : " But it is the method of nature 
reaching through all experience that our spirit- 
ual nature shall be developed through longing, 
seeking, striving for the unattained, and, for us, 
unattainable. No earnest hope is ever in vain, 
be its budding promise fulfilled or unfulfilled. 
Its broken petals yield a perfume that enriches 
every chamber of the heart. 

' They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.' n 

Oh, the pathos of the struggle ! Who does 
not sympathize with the wail of the brilliant, 
erratic, penitent Ada McCord-Isaacs-Menken- 
Heenan-Newell-Barclay in her poem "Infelix" ? 

" Where is the promise of my years, 

Once written on my brow ? 
Ere errors, agonies, and fears 
Brought with them all that speaks in tears ; 
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers ; 

Where sleeps that promise now ? 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 47 

" Naught lingers to redeem those hours, 

Still, still to memory sweet ! 
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers 
Are withered all ; and Evil towers 
Supreme above her sister powers 

Of Sorrow and Deceit. 

" I look along the columned years, 
And see Life's riven fane, 
Just where it fell, amid the jeers 
Of scornful lips, whose mocking sneers 
Forever hiss within mine ears, 

To break the sleep of pain. 

gl I can but own my life is vain, 

A desert void of peace ; 
I missed the goal I sought to gain, 
I missed the measure of the strain 
That lulls Fame's fever in the brain, 

And bids Earth's tumult cease. 

" Myself! alas for theme so poor — 
A theme but rich in fear ; 
I stand a wreck on Error's shore, 
A spectre, not within the door, 
A houseless shadow evermore, 
An exile lingering here. " 

Who does not appreciate the pathos of the 
inscription on her tombstone in Pere-la-Chaise, 
"Thou knowest." 



48 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XL 



(3) Thirdly, there has been a transfer of 
emphasis as to the origin of evil. The old 
theologians used to say that evil exists for the 
glory of God. But the Armenians have grown 
so aggressive that very few "orthodox" clergy 
have cared to express above a whisper any dis- 
sent from Mr. Beecher's arraignment of Calvin's 
dogma of the Fall of Adam ; namely : " Should 
a physician place a son of fifteen years in a 
plague hospital, expecting, nay certain, that he 
would incur the disease, and that he would 
propagate it to innumerable others, that he 
might show his skill in combating it, would not 
language fail to characterize the deed ? " \ Re- 
fraining from direct denial of the " Primer 
dogma," the pulpit is reiterating Plato's old 
solution of the existence of evil, substantially 
as follows : — 

1 North American Review, August, 1882. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 49 

11 The facts that man is made to hope, to imagine, to 
remember, and derives pleasure therefrom, and that life is 
made sweet and the coming of death concealed, show that 
our Creator is good and delights in giving joy to his crea- 
tures. Pain, therefore, must come from the necessities of 
creation, because without evil you cannot have good ; with- 
out the possibility of wrong there can be no virtue. A 
finite being like man must need be limited in knowledge, 
therefore liable to err ; limited in power, therefore unable 
to do as he ought ; limited in goodness, and so liable to 
fall into sin. Unless God made us unlimited like himself 
he could not make us free from evil." 

Indeed, the Almighty seems to have made 
some experience of evil the necessary condition 
of the development of the greatest qualities of 
the human soul. In order that the light graces 
of childhood may pass into the strength of 
manly devotion to right, trial must come, diffi- 
culty be encountered, sorrow endured ; the soul 
which has not suffered has not the depth of con- 
viction and solidity of purpose which turn the 
boy into the man. 

" There is no alternative but to assume that even crime 
and brutality are serving the higher order of the universe 
in some way we cannot fathom, but in God's way. To 



50 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

make a devil responsible for the bad, and God only ac- 
credited with the good, is not the way in which matters 
are disposed of in earthly courts. * He who does wrong 
through another does it himself,' says a legal proverb. 
Who made and takes care of Satan? " 1 

Even the evil caused by things good is com- 
ing to be considered a condition and method of 
good. What agonies and desolations have 
grown out of human love ! What pain has 
been caused by the desire of liberty ! The 
more sweet the product aimed at, the sharper 
the protecting sting. It is because it is so nec- 
essary that human love shall be pure and secure 
that all violations of its laws are so fiercely pun- 
ished. It is because liberty is so essential that 
all misdirected efforts for it end in sorrow and 
failure. " Optimi corrnptio pessimal And well 
we know that darkness is not the equivalent of 
light. There is no shadow but signifies a 
sunshine. As Mrs. Browning has pleasantly 

sung : — 

" There are nettles everywhere, 

But smooth, green grasses are more common still; 

The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud. 1 ' 

1 George A. Thayer : Sermon in Hawes Church, South Boston, 
1882. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 5 1 



XII. 



Is the existence of a personal devil really- 
dropping out of the popular belief ? Is he not 
mentioned — "sworn by" — as often as ever? 
This circumstance, it seems, ought not to import 
any assent to the averments of the New England 
Primer thereon ; no more than a classical allu- 
sion to Pluto implies a belief in a real Pluto ; no 
more than one's mention of " Uncle Tom " im- 
plies a belief that Mrs. Stowe's hero identically- 
lived. So also do we speak of what yEsop's fox 
did and said. So also as to Christ's alleged 
allusion to Jonah ; perhaps the reporter puts in 
his mouth a familiar myth to confirm the tradi- 
tion of a three days' entombment and a resur- 
rection of his body. Similarly were demons 
utilized in the parables, etc., they being familiar 
characters in traditions derived from Babylon. 
Indeed, our half-jesting mention of devils may 
rather indicate our dare-devil dissent. We 



52 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

would hardly assume that J. R. Lowell is super- 
stitious merely from his using the witch-hazel 
whim for simile : — 

" Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, 
Which like the hazel twig in faithful hands, 
Points surely to the hidden springs of truth." 

Dr. Lyman Abbott says "what we call the 
impulses of our lower nature are often the whis- 
pered suggestions of fiend-like natures watching 
for our fall and exultant if they can accomplish it. 
. . . Hence the solemn importance to resist 
the first yielding to one who never becomes the 
possessor of a human soul except by its own 
gradual and voluntary subjection to his hateful 
despotism." 

If any human soul has " voluntarily subjected 
itself" to evil passions, what need is there to 
call in the hypothesis of diabolic agency to ac- 
count for even the worst acts of which a man 
may be guilty ? Moral and physical qualities, 
there is reason to believe, are inherited. Will 
Dr. Abbott, standing in Plymouth pulpit, say : 
"No; it is a family devil that is inherited ; the 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 53 

fiend that tormented the father pursues the son 
and grandson"? Mr. Beecher's query, " How 
comes the world to be so wicked, if there be no 
devil ? " has generally been taken rather as 
a diversion than a sober argument. Horace 
Greeley once credited somebody with " ex- 
hobby-horscism." One finds it hard to suppress 
a naughty suspicion that in the " innermost 
apartment " 1 of minds (on any other theme) so 
rational and witty as those of the Abbotts and 
Beechers, the old hobgoblin dogma is occasionally 
stampeded — the intellect " ex-horscised " — by 

1 ' The quaint relief of that mirth-play 
With sorrow's minor key. 11 2 

1 " Man is an abode of three chambers : there is the outer 
hall, where casual callers are received; there is the inner recep- 
tion room, where friends are welcomed, and pass hours in famil- 
iar intercourse; there is a secret innermost apartment, where 
no foot, however near or dear, ever may tread, where the man 
sits with his own soul. . . . Yet there are moments when the 
curtain before the door seems lifted for an instant; and the eye 
of a friend may see, or fancy it sees, something of the sacred 
solitude." — Frederick Hazzleden. 

2 See Appendix " B " and " D." wSee also article " The Devil 
Theory," in the Editor's Table of the Popular Science Monthly ', 
April, 1889, edited by Wm. J. Youmans. 



54 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XIII. 

Incidental to the change of emphasis as to 
evil and as to future punishment, we may note 
the prevalent more rational use of the word 
"salvation." The pulpit is coming to acknowl- 
edge, with him of " calmly gathered thought" 
in Dr. Whittier's "The Meeting," — 

" That to be saved is only this, — 
Salvation from our selfishness, 
From more than elemental fire 
The souPs unsanctified desire, 
From sin itself, and not the pain 
That warns us of its chafing chain ; 
That worship's deeper meaning lies 
In mercy and not sacrifice, 
Not proud humilities of sense 
And posturing of penitence, 
But love's unforced obedience ; 
That Book and Church and Day are given 
For man, not God, — for earth, not heaven, — 
The blessed means to holiest ends, 
Not masters, but benignant friends ; 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 55 

That the dear Christ dwells not afar 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening at times with flattered ear 
To homage w T rung from selfish fear, 
But here amidst the poor and blind 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life, he lives to-day." 

Dr. John E. Todd, of New Haven, is reported 
to have said at a late meeting of the American 
Board, that orthodox councils had approved of 
young ministers who did not believe that the 
Bible is inspired, or that " sinners are saved by 
the blood of Christ"; and of others "who be- 
lieve in Universalism, rank, flat, square, eternal." 
Something in the pending discussion reminded 
a listener of the animus of the Lutheran's reply 
to a German sceptic that had offered to bring a 
friend who in a few minutes would convince 
him of the futility of a life after death. " My 
dear sir, I am much obliged for your offer, but 
I had much rather not see your friend." 



56 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XIV. 

(4) Fourthly, with an altered idea of sin, 
penalty, and the origin of evil, there comes log- 
ically a modified use of the word " atonement " ; 
a changed notion of a fall of Adam and of a 
prior covenant of redemption entered into be- 
tween two persons of a Godhead. An orthodox 
observer lately remarked that " wherever Bush- 
nellism gets a foothold the leaven of Unitarian- 
ism is not to be measured merely by the number 
of Unitarian church steeples in a State." And he 
deprecated what he termed " a growing, although 
in many quarters a rather tacit, acquiescence in 
taking atonement to mean simply ' at-one-ment,' 
rather than expiation ; a gradual acceptance of 
Dr. BushneH's view thereof, namely, that Jesus 
died to reconcile man to God, not God to man ; 
that there is no antagonism between justice and 
mercy which makes expiation necessary or pos- 
sible ; an increasing impression that the first 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 57 

Scripture notice of expiation as pertaining to 
sacrifices and bloodshed was imported from 
pagan religions under the plausible but unsus- 
pected sanction of classic usages and associa- 
tions ; a preference to refer to the blood of 
Jesus as only emblematical, just as we call 
our country saved by the blood of patriots." 1 

"A group stands before a masterpiece in art. One 
man is dim of sight, and sees as through a glass darkly. 
For him there is very little there. Another is color-blind. 
To him it appears other than it is. A third has an eye for 
drawing and perspective, and his judgment rests on that 
portion of the work. Another has complete vision, and 
takes in all that is visible in the picture, and more. He 
sees the soul of the artist's genius beaming through the 
whole, and is held by its power. Quite as various may be 
the estimate of the person of Christ by those to whom he 
is presented, and for like reason of more or less that is 
special in the observer.' 1 — John Cordener. 

1 As to Paul's use of " sacrifice," " ransom/' " lamb slain," etc., 
see "The Life of Lives," etc., pp. 272-4, wherein these expres- 
sions are considered his most natural nomenclature in answer to 
the amazed questionings of Jews, Greeks, and Romans, — " How 
can there be a religion without ritual, temple, or victim?" — 
namely, " Christ is our sacrifice, our passover, our lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world." 



58 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XV. 

(5) A fifth noticeable change is in the 
broader use of the word "revelation." 

' ' God of ages and of nations ! . 
Revelation is not sealed." 

Paley and other old writers on the evidences 
used to assume with the Jewish theologians 
that in order to a revelation of God and his will 
there must be signs and wonders, miracles. 
Now the word "revelation" is made to include 
everything that makes God known to men and 
everything that is made known of him. Mira- 
cles no longer occupy their old place as proofs 
of revealed religion, but the Christian system 
has gained by leaving the proof of its divine 
origin mainly in its divine truth. The army of 
philosophers, i.e., of wisdom-devotees, is not 
limited to the host of that graduate society 
which has inscribed on its banner " Philosophy 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 59 

the Guide of Life." Indeed, the motto most 
representative of the spirit of our age, institu- 
tions, and country is that spontaneous utterance 
of the inner light of sweet old Lucretia Mott, 
namely, " Truth for Authority ; not Authority 
for Truth." 

A good instance of the weakness of ratioci- 
nation in the remaining defenders of the histor- 
ical reliability of the miracle stories is afforded 
by the writer of the article Robert Elsmere and 
Christianity, in the Quarterly Review for Octo- 
ber, 1888 ; a title, by the way, importing the 
familiar old bit of Pharisaism that non-ortho- 
doxy is non-Christianity. At page 295 the 
writer asseverates that the Christian evidence 
will bear Hume's required test, — that the testi- 
mony to establish the recorded miracles be of 
such a character that its falsehood would be 
more miraculous than the miracles it attests, — 
by reason of the fact that " there never have 
been writers who produce on fair minds such an 
intense impression of truthfulness, soundness, 
simplicity, and moral force as the evangelists 
and the Apostolic writers." Granted the ques- 



60 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

tion begged, and that there has existed for many 
centuries in the minds of the masses an intense 
impression of truthfulness and mpral force in 
the Gospels : was this impression created by the 
narratives of thaumaturgy, or in spite of them, 
under stress of an infinitely loftier agency ; 
namely, the " sweet reasonableness " of the say- 
ings and character of Jesus presented in the 
original Aramaic record before the miracle-in- 
crements ? The writer virtually concedes the 
latter a few lines further on, when he says "the 
four Gospels are a concentrated blaze of moral 
light by which the heart of man has been illu- 
minated ever since." 1 

But Mr. Gladstone, in his article in the Nine- 
teenth Century for May, 1888, Robert Elsmere 
and the Battle of Belief while, with his charac- 
teristic eloquence, eulogizing this Gospel light 

1 For arguments pro and con as to miracles, see Appendices 
"A," "B," "C," and"D." See also " The Life of Lives," 
Chap, xxxiv. See also Mr. Huxley's article in the Nineteenth 
Century for November, 1887, "The Bishops and Science," 
wherein the Bishop of Manchester is quoted as declaring that 
" prayers for the interruption of God's natural order are of 
doubtful validity." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 6l 

as an indispensable factor in the establishment 
and achievements of Christianity, clings to the 
old view of " revelation," and declares other 
factors to have been essential. 

Mr. Gladstone demurs to the Squire's asser- 
tion that "an universal preconception" in favor 
of miracles at the birth of Christianity "gov- 
erning the work of all men of all schools," ade- 
quately accounts for the place which has been 
given to them in the New Testament ; adding 
that " Christianity had little direct contact with 
the Greek schools [Epicurean, Stoic, and Acad- 
emy], but they acted on the tone of thought in 
a manner not favorable, but adverse, to the pre- 
conception." 

Let us quote a few of Mr. Gladstone's obser- 
vations, without noting whether or not he ig- 
nores the definition of " divinity," as distin- 
guished by Unitarians from " deity" ; or whether 
or not he forgets the number of Unitarians out- 
side the Unitarian organization, to say nothing 
of insincere creed-mumblers, Mohammedans, or 
the inexterminable Jews ; or whether or not, 
although referring to Gibbon's fifteenth chapter, 



62 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

he slights Gibbon's view of the conditions of 
the Christianization of the Roman Empire ; or 
whether or not he ignores the growth of institu- 
tions partly beneficent and partly error-perpet- 
uating, like Jesuitism, Tammanyism, Mormon- 
ism, Bourbonism, Toryism, etc. 

" A Christianity without Christ is no Christianity; and 
a Christ not divine is one other than the Christ on which 
the souls of Christians have habitually fed. What virtue, 
what piety have existed outside of Christianity, is a ques- 
tion totally distinct. But to hold that since the great con- 
troversy of the early time was wound up at Chalcedon, 
the question of our Lord's divinity (which draws after it 
all that Robert Elsmere would excide) has generated the 
storms of the Christian atmosphere, would be simply an 
historical untruth. . . . The numbers of professed Unita- 
rians have increased less than those of other communions 
and less than the natural growth of the population. . . . 
Mrs. Ward is not awakened by the Christian more than 
by the Jewish history. No way to her assent is opened by 
the victory of the world's babes and striplings over its 
philosophers and scholars, and the serried array of empe- 
rors, aristocracies, and statesmen, with their elaborate 
apparatus of organized institutions. . . . Christianity ex- 
hibited life as a discipline, everywhere and in all parts, 
and changed essentially the place and function of suffering 
in human experience. Accepting the ancient morality as 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 63 

far as it went, it not only enlarged, but transfigured its 
teaching by the laws of humility and forgiveness, and by 
a law of purity, perhaps even more new and strange than 
these. . . . The whole fabric, social, as well as personal, 
rests on the new type of individual character which the 
Gospel brought into life and action ; enriched and com- 
pleted without doubt from collateral sources which made 
part of the ' evangelical preparation,' but in its central 
essence due entirely to the dispensation founded in the 
land of Judea, and the history of the Hebrew race." ' 

Indeed ! Perhaps, however, Mr. Gladstone 
will never quite assert that the Thirty-Nine 
Articles and the Westminster Confession (giv- 
ing his definition of " Christianity ") are so very 
reasonable as not to need amendment. Hath 
Homily VI., Art. XXXV., " Against Excess of 
Apparel," become " obsolete"? If not, what 
width of collar doth the " Defender of the 
Faith" prescribe for her male subjects? and 
what is the orthodox ratio between her bust 
" apparel" and her bustle plus trail, "so that all 
things be done to edifying" the British tithe- 
payer. Ah ! quoth Hannah More, — ■ 

" In men this blunder still you find, 
All think their little set mankind. " 

1 See in Appendix "A," Mrs. Ward's reply. 



64 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XVI. 

(6) A sixth change relates to the develop- 
ment of the character and mission of Jesus. 
Formerly it was generally preached that either 
he was always omniscient and his opinions un- 
changeable, or that he had a kind of omnipo- 
tence and omniscience which he so kept in 
abeyance as not to interfere with the conditions 
of his human nature. It is now becoming more 
generally taught that he had a natural growth, 
— "waxed strong," — intellectually and spirit- 
ually. More specifically may this be expressed 
by a brief quotation from Moncure D. Conway. 
After adverting to Christ's measuring usage and 
tradition by real principles, — his directing the 
rich young man to keep the real and human 
commandments, and not naming those that pro- 
tect Jehovah, — Mr. Conway says : — 

" How far Jesus carried this rationalism, we cannot 
fully know, for his words come to us mingled with much 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 6$ 

that is irrational in his reporters. Nevertheless, to the 
careful eye, his pearl will not be confused with the shell 
enclosing it. We know that it was a great soul, far above 
any New Testament writer, which sends us those fine pro- 
tests against prayer in public places, that relegation of the 
heart to the closet for its mystical communion with the 
Highest. Not one of those believers in popular marvels 
who report him could have invented those exalted poetic 
interpretations of nature which bid us learn of the sparrow 
and of the lily, more glorious than Solomon in his splen- 
dor, and appealed to men to discern the signs of their own 
time, as for the weather they watched the morning red and 
glow of evening. It was no believer in a fictitious provi- 
dence who rebuked the notion that those on whom the 
tower of Siloam fell were worse than others. And even in 
the fourth Gospel we can trace back to him that wonderful 
saying, that he would not pray for his disciples, because 
God needs no prompting of his love ; and also that lesson 
of humility taught by his washing the feet of the humble 
working-men who followed him. These things represent 
the integrity of a great mind, — the mind of a thinker, a 
reasoner, a poet. 

" At one period Christ says, 'The scribes and Phari- 
sees sit in Moses' seat : all things therefore whatsoever 
they bid you, do and keep ; but do not ye after their works, 
for they say and do not.' Here may be noticed the atti- 
tude of a youth in transition ; for at another time he does 
what those occupants of Moses' seat tell him not to do, 
and repudiates them on principle. They tell him to keep 



66 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

the Sabbath; but he — casting, no doubt, a look on ever- 
active nature around him — replies, * My Father ceases not 
his work on the Sabbath, nor do I. 1 

" At first, he evidently hoped to purify the ancient relig- 
ion of his fathers from its later corruptions. In the ardor 
of this early aim, he may have made the violent attack on 
the tradesmen in the temple ascribed to him. Before his 
attention was turned to the law itself, he attacked only the 
priests' hypocritical evasions thereof; for instance, their 
allowing a man to purchase an indulgence for not support- 
ing — not honoring — his parents, by paying a sum of 
money into the temple. But the time soon arrived when 
the conviction was forced upon him that the Jewish Church 
could not be so purified or expanded as to answer the 
needs of mankind or represent his ideal ; that of all that 
edifice not one stone should be left upon another. 1 " 2 

1 " Idols and Ideals " — essay thereto appended. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 6j 



XVII. 

As to the development of the character and 
mission of Jesus, the views of many prominent 
thinkers, speakers, and writers, both Evangeli- 
cal and Liberal, are found to be not materially 
different from that expressed in a discourse 
by the late D. A. Wason on " Jesus and the 
Christ": — 

"Evidently Jesus imagined a divine society here on 
earth, made divine by the instant, unqualified sway of 
ethical law, and he scarcely had consciousness or life 
apart from that holy imagination. It may be seen that he 
found in himself more than a merely individual being, felt 
the tides of infinite life, the vigors of eternal law, stream- 
ing through his soul, throbbing in his pulses, thrilling in 
his emotion. A heart world-great, he felt himself the son 
of all his kind; a heart infinitely dutiful and trustful, he 
felt only a filial relation to the Highest, — gloriously inca- 
pable of knowing himself as a mere finite ego, gloriously 
incapable of being divided in consciousness from either 
heaven or humanity. The Hebrew hope of a Messiah 
Jesus made purely ethical and spiritual, — one and the 



68 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

same with the perennial prayer of all best souls. The 
coming kingdom was not to be the reign of an individual 
or of a nation, but of morals pure and simple. His Mes- 
siahship was one of announcement chiefly, and what he 
announced was simply the ethical ideal in immediate 
realization. 

" It may be true that Jesus expected that reign of 
morals to be ushered in by some extraordinary display of 
divine power ; that linking together his great hope for 
humanity and his spirit of self-sacrifice, he trusted the 
change would come through his own submission to the 
last suffering and ignominy — come in the moment when 
submission on the one side and triumph on the other were 
complete ; that he went up to Jerusalem at last with these 
expectations brought nearly to a focus ; that his agony in 
the garden was in part the anguish of uncertainty, when 
the dread hour drew nigh and no sign was given ; and 
that his cry upon the cross, ' My God ! why hast thou for- 
saken me ? ' indicated the sudden terrible revulsion of his 
hope. These conjectures, save perhaps the last one, are 
to be entertained only as doubtful ; there is much to be 
said against them. I cannot, however, refuse to hear the 
sense of desertion and desolation in that last cry. There, 
it would seem his greatest heart broke. The golden 
clouds that had glorified his sky turned to sheer blackness, 
and gathered about him to muffle his last moments in a 
brief night of despair. What a heart-break ! What a 
tragedy ! All the tragic poetry of all the world is but 
tame beside this." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 69 

Mr. Wason's ethical view of Jesus has lately 
been well supplemented by that of W. M. Salter 
as follows : — 

"The thought of Jesus was cast in Jewish moulds. 
The kingdom of heaven was a Jewish expression. 1 He 
shared in the popular hope, but his intensely moral genius 
worked a radical transformation therein. It was no longer 
that Israel should rule in the world but that justice should 
rule in the world through Israel. The Gentiles should 
have equal places of honor in the kingdom. He dared to 
dream of a world-wide dominion of justice, and to think 
of himself as one called of heaven to bring it to pass. To 
this end he gathered followers who should sit on thrones 
by his side. The very angels of God should be his minis- 
ters, to accomplish the sentences he should pronounce. 

" The real value of Jesus to the world is that he has 
left such traditions of lofty idealism behind him. The 
kingdom of heaven did not come as he expected. He 
himself did not come with heavenly glory to judge and 
prevent all injustice. But he had a soul great enough to 
believe in a kingdom of heaven and a world judgment. 
He looked for them, his heart went out to them, and that 
is why we love and honor him." 2 

1 Daniel ii. 27. 

2 The Christian Register. 



70 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XVIII. 

(7) A seventh observable change is in the 
use of the word "religion," and in the gradually 
less and less distinction made between spiritual 
and humanitarian work. It is now generally 
considered that religion has to do with every- 
thing that tends to the true improvement of 
human life ; with social, educational, sanitary, 
commercial, and even political questions, — that 
indeed every duty is a religious duty. 

A bright observer has lately well said : " New 
but deeply religious questions heretofore crowded 
out of thought by interest in doctrinal discus- 
sions, are now forcing themselves upon us for 
discussion and settlement. The housing of the 
poor, the training and education of children, the 
evangelization of the masses, the protection of 
the weak against the strong, the restriction of 
the evil forces that prey upon society, the found- 
ing of homes, nurseries, and libraries, as well as 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 7 1 

the extension of missionary work at home and 
abroad, are the practical questions now mainly 
occupying the thoughts of the most religious 
men and women. Christianity, so long theo- 
retical, seems at last to be becoming practical, 
and to be resolutely applying itself as a remedy 
for the ills and lacks of mankind." 

It is reported that the Unitarians have ren- 
dered organized contribution to the Methodists' 
primary teachings of the Freedmen. May not 
sects as well as individuals thus bear one 
another's burdens and so fulfil the law of 
Christ — and of our Creator — in development? 

" Thy burden is God's gift, 
And it will make the bearer calm and strong ; 
Yet, lest it press too heavily and long, 
He says, ' Cast it on me, and it shall easy be.' 

" And those who heed his voice, 
And seek to give it back in trustful prayer, 
Have quiet hearts that never can despair ; 
And hope lights up the way upon the darkest day.'" * 

lu M. F." in The Christian Register. The excerpt recalls 
Schiller's words : " Ueber sein Hertz zu siegeri," etc. — "To gain 
a victory over one's heart is great; I honor the brave man. But 
he who conquers through his heart is a greater one in my eyes." 



72 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XIX. 

(8) This suggests an eighth change ; namely, 
in the broader and less literal interpretation of 
some of the precepts of Jesus. Take, for in- 
stance, the injunction, " Resist not him that is 
evil.'' Dr. J. M. Whiton is not the only divine 
who, in commenting upon the Quaker view 
of non-resistance, would say : " If, during the 
period nearest the first announcement of this 
precept, violence had been repelled by violence 
and aggression been met by self-defence, the 
sheep would have been helplessly overmatched 
by the wolves. Which in the light of the his- 
torical sequel is more probable, — that Jesus 
was here speaking paradoxically, or plainly and 
practically ? If he spoke with plain practical- 
ness for a special exigency, then his injunc- 
tions are applicable only when the exigency is 
reproduced." 

Similarly the precept on almsgiving is limited 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 73 

to places where, as in a Jewish village, every- 
body knowing almost every one else, there is 
little risk of deception. Possibly Jesus qualified 
some of his precepts with restrictions which 
have not come down to us. Probably not half 
the conversation with Nicodemus is reported. ' 

This lack of completeness must be considered 
when we try to determine whether Jesus believed 
in an objective as well as a subjective benefit of 
prayer. Prayer is in a sense instinctive. Its 
universality shows that man stands in a relation 
of dependence to the unseen world. The soul 
appears to be so constituted as to be at its best 
when in the mood indicated by the aphorism : 
" Solicitude is the audience-chamber of God." 
Just as it is a part of the order of the universe 
that the will of man exerted outwardly in co- 
operation with natural laws shall modify their 
results in nature, so, also, exerted inwardly in 
co-operation with spiritual laws, his will — his 
aspiration — may modify their results in the soul. 
This fact, that prayer to be effectual must accord 
with law, seems to be the gist of the principal 
precepts of Jesus thereon, when construed to- 
gether. 



74 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

Hence the force of the allegation in Dr. Priest- 
ley's reply to Thomas Paine that " petition may 
be an unnecessary part of prayer." It is easy 
to guess how might have arisen, in an Oriental 
monarchy, the vulgar notion of objective prayer 
and of intercession of the saints. An old col- 
lect had a prayer beginning, " O Mary, by thy 
right of a mother, command our Redeemer to 
grant us," etc. 1 

1 See Priestley's " History of the Corruptions of Christian- 
ity," Part II., p. 217: "Jura matris redemptori h?ipera" etc. 
See also "The Life of Lives," etc., pp. 200 ff. and 208 ff., dis- 
tinguishing supplicational from aspirational prayer. See also 
in The Christian Register ', 1887, p. 403, an article by John A. 
Symonds on "The Progress of Thought in our Time"; espe- 
cially the portion (on p. 404) relating to identification of law 
with God. See also Id., p. 776, an article by Prof. F. G. Pea- 
body, "Three Days in the Life of Nicodemus." See also Dr. 
J. F. Clarke's sermon of April 4, 1886, on Nicodemus; also his 
sermon of Dec. 20, 1885, "The Gospel in the Gospels." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 75 



XX. 

Our notions of prayer depend somewhat on 
our notions of Providence. Rev. S. J. Barrows, 
in one of his pithy editorials, 1 remarks : — 

" To take from Puritanism the idea of Providence in the 
narrow, special form in which it was held would be to take 
out its spinal column. Nevertheless, nothing is truer than 
that Puritan ideas of Providence, so closely modelled on 
Hebrew theocratic Jahvism, are melting into newer and 
larger conceptions of God under a more beneficent and 
rational view of his character and government. One can- 
not fail to be struck with the reverent egotism of the old 
Puritans, as in their religious simplicity they interpreted 
each calamity they suffered as some special judgment upon 
them for their sins. Their fast-days seem to us at first as 
the very abnegation of humility ; but, viewed from another 
aspect, as the acme of egotism, the same egotism which 
made the Jews assume that they were the special subjects 
of Jahveh, to be chastised for their failings and rewarded 
for their fidelity. 

1 The Christian Register, May 23, 1889. 



y6 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" We recall the pious self-consciousness of an old Scotch 
woman, who, on a voyage a few years ago across the At- 
lantic, attributed the breaking of the steamer's shaft to 
some minor sin of hers committed before her departure. 
Though there were two hundred more passengers on board, 
the old lady vicariously, and with apparent humility, as- 
sumed the whole guilt of this divine judgment. It did not 
seem to occur to her that there was any egotism in think- 
ing that God considered her of sufficient importance to 
disable the steamer and delay the journey of her fellow- 
passengers simply for the sake of castigating her for some 
formal sin. Fortunately for her, her fellow-passengers did 
not take the same view of the matter as did the sailors 
with whom Jonah shipped, or some providential fish might 
have been needed to rescue her from a watery grave. 

" Modern science and modern philosophy have not 
annihilated the doctrine of Providence in the largest sense 
of that word, for they have not abolished cause, nor have 
they abolished teleology ; but they have shown how often 
our interpretations of cause and purpose have been at fault. 
And they have shown how much larger is the sphere in 
which the designs of Providence are wrought out. Instead 
of a part or a corner of the world being the special theatre 
of the divine care, a more enlightened philosophy regards 
the whole universe as the sphere of God's life and action. 
So the goodness of God cannot be limited to any portion 
of the human race. The whole world is the school-house 
of humanity, and all men are included under God's pro- 
tection and blessing. ' He maketh his sun to shine upon 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. JJ 

the evil and the good, and his rain to fall upon the just 
and the unjust. ' Nor does God have to amend or revise 
his laws, to correct errors or omissions, or to adapt them 
to individual cases. Far more satisfactory and inspiring 
than provincial views of God's purpose is it to believe that 
his Providence works for the good of the whole, and that 
what is best for the whole is best for the individual. In- 
stead of seeking to adjust God to our purposes, we shall 
then seek to adjust our lives to the life and law of God." 

With this view of God's wisdom and goodness, 
we shall arise from vain and selfish petitions to 
the grander assurance of Jesus, "Your Father 
knoweth what things ye have need of before ye 
ask him." And herein lies the philosophy of 
resignation. From this elevated standpoint we 
can appreciate the acquiescence which devout 
souls have praised in gems of hymnology. 

" 111 that God blesses is our good, 
And unblest good is ill ; 
And all is right which seems most wrong, 
If it be His dear will. 

" I would rather walk in the dark with God, 
Than go alone in the light ; 
I would rather walk with him by faith, 
Than walk alone by sight." 1 

1 Miss M. G. Brainard. 



y8 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" At last the page with tears was wet ; 
He sobbed it out — no whit resigned - 
* O mamma, I can do it yet, 
I see it better in my mind I ' 

" I kissed the little tear-stained face. 
I praised that crooked a, b, c ; 
No finished curves of artist grace 
Were ever worth so much to me. 

" For, nestling close my baby boy, 
I saw into the Father's heart ; 
Yes, surely this shall be my joy, 

God knows the worth of my poor art. 

" With tender sympathy he sees 
Our failures in the bitter real, 
And measures not our life by these, 
But by the height of our ideal. 

" And when each day my task I close, 
Sad with the poor results I find, 
I'll say, with trusting faith, He knows 
I said it better in my mind. 1 ' 1 



If thou shouldst never see my face again, 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 

1 Maria Upham Drake, in The Youth's Companion. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 79 

Rise like a fountain for me day and night. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats 

That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 

Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 

For so the whole round earth is every way 

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 1 



" Because I would 
I climbed the sunny slopes of maidenhood ; . . . . 
I thought not of the end ; nor did I care 
To think about it, whether it were fair 
Beyond the summit ; every moment glad 
To pick the buds around me, for I had 
No doubts, no fears ; believed that God was good ; 
Believed in Heaven and Immortality, 
Because I would. 

" Because I must, 
I lean to-day upon my staff of trust : . . . . 
Have I climbed up so far, and all for naught? 
Ah, no ! Some glorious glimpses I have caught, 
And cannot help but take the down-stretched hand, 
And cling to it as tottering I stand. 
Then, tell me not that I am empty dust ; 
My spirit is Belief ! I hold to Thee, 
Because I must. 11 2 

1 Tennyson. 2 Julia H. May, in The Boston Journal. 



80 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XXL 

In interpreting the precepts of Jesus it is 
now, much more than formerly, also borne in 
mind that variety of statement does not import 
contradiction. What on one occasion Jesus, or 
Paul, or James may say, or omit to emphasize, 
upon love, or faith, or works, must be compared 
with what they say on another. In this way 
extremes are avoided, and the true principle of 
the precept readily grasped. Thus has been 
answered the cavil of a certain housekeeper, 
that, had she been Martha, when told by Jesus 
that Mary's was the better part, she would have 
responded, "Then let me sit down and attend 
to conversation, and let us all go without sup- 
per." 

The solution is very simple. Martha and 
Mary are permanent types of character ; the 
actively useful, the inwardly devout. One does 
good in order to be good ; the other tries to be 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 8 1 

good in order to be able to do good. One repre- 
sents conscience, the other devotion ; one stands 
for piety, the other for morality. Both ele- 
ments are indispensable to any real excellence 
of character. Conduct of probation and condi- 
tion of soul are interdependent. " Cultivate the 
Mary element exclusively ; devote yourself to 
saving your own soul or to self-culture ; be ab- 
sorbed in devotion to truth, holiness, love in 
the heart ; live in solitary aspiration ; live for 
piety alone ; and this tends at last to selfishness. 
On the other hand, cultivate the Martha ele- 
. ment exclusively ; be absorbed in outward du- 
ties ; take no time for study, meditation, prayer, 
and the life of the soul ; and this tends at last 
to shallowness." x 

It is also borne in mind that the words of the 
evangelists as to Beelzebub, demonology, etc., 
do not necessarily raise a presumption that 
Jesus actually shared the superstitions of his 
age and countrymen. He doubtless adapted his 
matter to the ideas and understanding of his 
hearers. 

1 Dr. J. F. Clarke : Sermon in the Church of the Disciples, 
1886; it will appear in 77ie Disciples' Pulpit. 



82 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" In parable in converse with a throng 
Enthralled by demonology derived 
From Babylon, e'er condescending well 
To study all the spirit of the age, 
And utilize its mental furniture, 
E'en though its folk-lore, fantasy bewitched 
And wild bedevilled, seem to freer thought 
Mere heir-loom rubbish drifted down the stream 
Of time from earth's child races cherishing 
Barbaric myths." 

If a recent definition of Christianity — as 
" evolution of altruism " — be proper, and if, as 
Dr. Chapin used to say, " Morality is the vesti- 
bule of Religion/' then such accommodative 
disposition, so far from being deprecated as un- 
manly, should be honored as an initiative of one's 
heart into the grand temple of historic human 
sympathy. Terrence, Shakespeare, Burns — 
verbum sap, 

" The best things any mortal hath 

Are those which every mortal shares. 
The grass is softer to my tread, 

For rest it yields unnumbered feet ; 
Sweeter to me the wild rose red, 

Because it makes the whole world sweet." x 

• 

1 Lucy Larcom. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 83 



XXII. 

(9) A ninth transfer of pulpit emphasis is 
apparent in more and more putting Christianity 
above Churchianity, — a tendency towards sim- 
plicity and away from subtilty ; an acknowledg- 
ment of the entire absence of any dogmatism 
in the Sermon on the Mount and of any mere 
theology in the Lord's Prayer ; a recognition of 
the cordiality of his religion with the law of 
nature, with the spontaneous creed of the race, 
which, without any metaphysical paraphernalia, 
ecclesiastical upholstery or endless mummy- 
wrapping, simply affirms that there is a God 
of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, who 
claims our service in loving what he loves, in 
maintaining his will and helping his children. 
A live church, one that has a function, is more 
and more becoming distinguished from a dead 
church, one lapsed into defunction. 

Less and less do we hear any arrogantly posi- 



84 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

tive asseverations of the total corruption of the 
natural affections, the transference of guilt and 
penalty, the actual substitution of Tightness, or 
the efficacy of intellectual belief to avert chas- 
tisement for sin. In a word, the pulpit is grow- 
ing more rational. Mr. Conway's remark as to 
the English people is also somewhat applicable 
to the American : " They have evolved a free- 
thinking church amid symbols of ecclesiasti- 
cism." 

Indeed, nobody would be surprised to hear an 
evangelical preacher serenely start off as fol- 
lows : " The Bible is a book of books. Some 
were written many centuries before the others. 
The writers wrote under different circum- 
stances. Some of the records are more frag- 
mentary than others. Some are more poetical 
or legendary than others. To view the collec- 
tion as a unit, a theocratic ukase, a fetich or 
idol, is to look with the eyes half shut. Even 
assuming that there are three aspects of human 
existence — the life practical, the life intellect- 
ual, and the life religious or mystical — and that 
each has its own requirements in point of under- 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 85 

standing, still our obligation to revere must be 
at one with our necessity to analyze. With 
mysteries, with whatever surpasses reason, ratio- 
cination meddles in vain. But as to absurdities, 
as to whatever contradicts reason, it is our duty 
to guard and exercise a faculty quite as heaven- 
bequeathed as imagination, emotion or intui- 
tion." ! 

There are indications of a change also as to 
emotionalism and revival crazes. For even D. 
L. Moody now makes the following animadver- 
sion : " As things go, an evangelist goes to a 
church and preaches, and gathers in one hun- 
dred converts ; and it is ' Hurrah, boys ! ' Then 
in a year you can't find one of them/' This 
remark, however, should not be too widely ap- 
plied. Prof. Drummond, the college revivalist, 
observes that " it is a characteristic of Christian 
experience nowadays, that men do not have a 
conviction of sin but a conviction of righteous- 
ness ; a desire to be good rather than a sense of 
guilt. The present type of experience is the 
higher of the two." 

1 "The Life of Lives," etc., p. 9. 



86 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

These two earnest Christian workers are not 
the only modern revivalists who waste no en- 
ergy in calling the righteous to repentance ; 
who never let their headlong zeal become so hot 
as to scorch those whom it seeks to save ; who 
never forget the admonition of Socrates : " Your 
zeal, dear Crito, is worth much, if it be well di- 
rected ; but otherwise, the greater it is, the 
more dangerous. ,, 

" All weakness falters, fumes, is full of jars, 

While Power and Peace oft-times are reconciled. 

Frail rivulets fret. Earth, whirled amid the stars, 

Wakes not a nested bird or slumbering child."" 1 

"How rare it is," exclaimed Fenelon, "to 
find a soul still enough to hear God speak ! " 

1 The YoutWs Companion, 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 87 



XXIII. 

In point of the pulpit's becoming more ra- 
tional, there may also be noticed the diminution 
of those ascetics who denounce as sinful certain 
worldly enjoyments which may have been to 
themselves a source of temptation, and within 
the circle of which they cannot conceive the re- 
ligious life of other souls to grow robust ; who, 
however weak, set up a conventional code of 
duty founded on their own experience, which 
they extend to all, however strong ; whose zeal 
without common sense is like that of the col- 
porteur giving to a one-legged soldier a tract 
against dancing. Our Puritan ancestors would 
have been shocked at a Christian club's pro- 
viding for chess and checkers, dramatic and 
opera-musical entertainments, promenades and 
quadrilles. Rather amusing to a pair of athletes 
passing from the gymnasium of a Young Men's 
Christian Association into the reading-room, to 



88 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

open The Youttis Companion and read as to a 
famous old-time wrestler of Onondaga County, 
N. Y. : " Grandfather never wrestled after that, 
for shortly afterwards he became converted and 
joined the church at Manlius Centre." 

Even Charles Sprague, though exclaiming, in 
his ode on " Curiosity," — 

" Lo, where the stage, the poor degraded stage," etc., 

might afterwards witness the late Mrs. Vincent's 
impersonation of a fussily dressed old maid, co- 
quettishly affecting to be shocked at J. Scatter- 
ing Batkins's forwardness over the tangled skein, 
and not at all forget the elsewhere soberly and 
generously Christian -hearted woman and her 
daily fulfilment of Sir Walter Scott's dying 
injunction : " Lockhart, be a good man ! Noth- 
ing else will satisfy you when you come to lie 
here ! " Stevenson is no visionary in singing, — 

" What if his verifying eye, 
O monks, should pass your corner by? 
For still the Lord is Lord of might ; 
In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight; 
The plough, the spear, the laden barks, 
The field, the founded city, marks ; 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 89 

He marks the smiler of the streets, 
The singer upon garden seats ; 
He sees the climber in the rocks ; 
To Him the shepherd folds his flocks. 
For those he loves that underprop 
With daily virtues heaven^ top, 
And bear the falling sky with ease, 
Unfrowning caryatides. 
Those He approves that ply the trade, 
That rock the child, that wed the maid, 
That with weak virtues, weaker hands, 
Sow gladness on the peopled lands, 
And still, with laughter, song, and shout, 
Spin the great wheel of earth about. 11 

Nevertheless is it true — " and pity 'tis 'tis 
true" — that the stage is often " degraded." 
Sometimes a " variety performance" is " vari- 
ety" simply of silly conceits, affectations, and 
indecencies ; and advertisements, not of nickelo- 
deons alone, prove products of paid liars. An 
honest quest for innocent recreation may end 
in consciousness of swallowed humbug, if not 
poison. Ah ! the aphorism of old Hippocrates : 
" Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, 
experiment slippery, judgment difficult." 



90 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XXIV. 



(10) Naturally, with this difference of assev- 
eration and of insistence on religious professions, 
there comes a tenth change ; namely, either a 
diminished emphasis upon formal creeds, or for- 
mulation of simpler and broader ones. Car- 
dinal Newman, after searching through the first 
three centuries, reports that " the creeds of that 
early day make no mention in their letter of the 
Catholic doctrine of the Trinity at all. They 
make mention, indeed, of the three. But that 
there is any mystery in the doctrine, — that the 
three are one, that they are co-equal, co-eternal, 
all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, 
— is not stated, and never could be gathered 
from them. ,, 

In this connection, Dr. E. E. Hale says : * — 

" With artistic skill, Mrs. Ward refuses to tell one word 
of what Elsmere read in those mysterious * studies' which 

1 North American Revieiv, January, 1889: Article, Sympo- 
sium on " Robert Elsmere's Mental Struggles." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 9 1 

were so fatal to his peace and to Catharine's. All that 
the reader knows is, that he came out from his reading 
sure that there was no apostolic succession ; sure, as Car- 
dinal Newman says, that there was no scientific doctrine 
of the Trinity ; sure that there was no doctrine of the 
vicarious atonement in these early books, and shocked to 
find, for instance, that an author like Clement, a friend of 
Paul, speaks of the resurrection of the Phoenix once in 
five hundred years, apparently with the same confidence 
with which he speaks of the resurrection of Jesus. . . . 
Thus Robert Elsmere and all other intelligent people who 
care to preserve a historical foundation for Christianity 
find the study of the first three centuries makes Chris- 
tianity to be a very different thing from what it is called 
in the creeds of the Dark Ages. 11 

This change in an honest young truth-seeker 
is more fully delineated in another brochure by 
Mrs. Ward, 1 wherein she says : — 

"A question of authorship, an attempt to sift some 
half-legendary material, or to estimate the value of a given 
writers testimony under certain ascertained conditions of 
time and place, will suddenly lead him direct, by the natu- 
ral transitions of thought, into comparisons, into analo- 
gies and inferences, from which, after long pondering, he 
awakes to find a new, and, as it seems to him, bewildering 

1 " Sin and Unbelief." 



92 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

and terrible light breaking upon life. Thenceforward it is 
of little importance how the change thus initiated is carried 
on, whether he undertakes an elaborate examination into 
the claims of orthodox Christianity, or whether the de- 
tachment from his early beliefs remain still indirect and 
gradual in operation. In the end the Time Spirit con- 
quers ; and long before his triumph is acknowledged to 
the soul, the Christian religion is dumbly felt to have been 
drawn within the circle of scientific inquiry, and to have 
been there stripped of its peculiar pretensions. When full 
recognition of the altered state of things arrives, it brings 
with it the no longer avoidable confession that the whole 
vast system of dogmatic Christianity, with all its lovely 
and imposing associations, is but one of many systems 
that human nature has in turn framed for its shelter and 
support ; that, like all other theologies the world has seen, 
it is the product of human needs and human skill. 

"What follows? Inevitably a time of struggle and of 
blankness, when all the landmarks of life and conduct 
appear to waver, and the bitterness of lost certainty makes 
itself abundantly felt. Is the Christian's happy certainty 
of an ideal purpose in this life and an ideal justice in the 
next, indeed, a delusion? Is there really no rest in God, 
no peace in Christ? Has the gracious figure of Galilee 
and of Calvary in reality no significance different in kind 
from that which attaches to the other heroic and tender 
figures which have illumined human history? Is there, 
indeed, no certainty of our whence, no news of our 
whither? Is death the end? And if so, of what un- 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 93 

relenting power are we the bruised and helpless play- 
things ? 

" But if the mind we have been describing is of temper 
fine enough to bear the strain, its history will not end 
here. With some men, less richly dowered by nature with 
the religious gift, such a crisis would lead to an attitude 
of pure agnosticism ; and life would be to them hencefor- 
ward confessedly inexplicable. In matters of conduct they 
would claim to be guided by the aggregate experience of 
civilized mankind ; and, according to the relative degrees 
of moral cultivation or moral sensitiveness in each case, 
this experience would represent a higher or a lower stand- 
ard. In poetry, in human relationships, in natural beauty, 
they would look for the soothing or stimulating forces nec- 
essary for the sustenance of moral life at all. But in the 
case we have been considering we have been dealing 
throughout with a strongly religious temperament, com- 
bined with a keen and honest intellectual faculty. 

"The intellect has now had its satisfaction, but the 
needs of the inner life become only the more pressing. It 
is dimly felt that in work, in unselfishness, in charity, may 
be found the bridge from the present chaos to some surer 
spiritual ground. Some hard intellectual task, helped for- 
ward by homely self-denial and varied by some quiet work 
of charity or public usefulness, is accordingly undertaken. 
Life and thought flow on, blindly and painfully often, but 
by patient effort, by resolute sincerity, the soul is slowly 
nearing its appointed goal. Months or years may pass, 
but the end is not the less sure. To the heart that has 



94 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

been darkened by the eclipse of old ideals, God, the high- 
est Ideal, at last reveals Himself. In a region far removed 
from the trains of thought and argument which had broken 
down for him the claims of received opinions ; far out of 
reach of all questions of criticism and exegesis, of histor- 
ical development and historical method, the soul rises to 
the source of Love, of Truth, of Beauty, and finds con- 
solation. There are difficulties here, indeed, which the 
intellect follows and faces. But in the high region of 
philosophic possibilities, such a nature as we have im- 
agined embraces the possibility which satisfies it most 
deeply, and this possibility will be — God. 

" Here, then, at last, is rest and permanence. For this 
is ground which has never been, and never can be, suc- 
cessfully attacked. God cannot be proved from outside, 
but neither can he be disproved. No perfecting of the 
historical method, no comparative handling of religions, 
can cut the ground from under this faith. Other men, he 
feels, are free to disbelieve it. But he feels, also, with joy 
unspeakable, that he is free to believe it, and the kernel of 
the inner life thus saved, he begins to construct its whole 
anew. 

" And as the reconstruction proceeds, he recovers all 
that is permanent in Christianity. He finds again the 
Master, no longer disguised from him by the veils, whether 
of ignorant love, or of intellectual subtlety, but living, true, 
intelligible, the man Christ Jesus. He makes the name of 
Christian his own once more, and will assert his right to 
it no less passionately than reasonably. In the present 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 95 

and in the future he looks for a regenerate Christian soci- 
ety purified by submission to the divine education of the 
world, but as fervent and high-minded as of old. Mean- 
while, life is summed up for him in two relations, his rela- 
tion to God and his relation to this ideal Christian society. 
* /// thee, O Lord, have I put ?ny trust? expresses the 
spirit of the first ; while the second, which contains his 
practical, every-day life, with its work, its charities, its 
tolerances, will be regulated and inspired by words long 
known to him, and now infinitely widened in meaning, 
4 This do in remembrance of me? 

" But while the Christian passion in its purest form 
thus revives in him, it leads him to make no compromise 
with truth. If miracles, however innocently manufactured, 
are untrue in fact, and misleading in philosophy ; if the 
creeds, therefore, are a mere collection of propositions, 
venerable for their antiquity and associations, but in no 
way binding on enlightened conscience ; if the Bible rep- 
resents an important section of the religious life of man- 
kind, but a section only, to be handled and judged like 
other sections, — he will endeavor to let these truths, also, 
secondary as they are, express themselves in his life. He 
will not profess to belong to a Church which, by its ac- 
credited officers and accepted formulae, regards the creeds 
and the miracles as the essential basis of Christian belief. 
... By and by will come the time for union." 



g6 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 



XXV. 

And that time is coming so fast, as the mul- 
titude perceive, that the great thoughts which 
intensely hold humanity, — God, immortality, 
and duty, and the marvellous influence of 
Christ, — are not ideas that can be set down in 
little formal propositions, and learned off like 
the multiplication table. Brooke Herford well 
remarks : " Our cardinal position on the whole 
subject is to keep an open, reverent, thoughtful 
mind ; to recognize that there are subjects on 
which if men do think, there are sure to be dif- 
ferences of thought, and to leave the free play for 
such differences of thought, not to cramp them 
by setting up formulas to which all must agree." 

Not alone in the so-called liberal churches 
and literature, may one, on concluding medita- 
tion, find lingering in his or her heart, "in lieu 
of Athanasian creeds," the harmony of an ideal 
not unlike the following : — 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 97 

" 1 believe in human kindness, 

Large amid the sons of men, 
Nobler far in willing blindness 

Than in censure's keenest ken. 
I believe in self-denial 

And its secret throb of joy ; 
In the love that lives through trial, 

Dying not, though death destroy. 

" I believe in love eternal, 

Fixed in God's unchanging will, 
That, beneath the deep infernal, 

Hath a depth that's deeper still ; 
In its patience, its endurance, 

To forbear and to retrieve, 
In the large and full assurance 

Of its triumph, I believe." 1 

Or like the following : — 

<; Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds; 
Reason and Religion, like two broad seas, 
Yearn for each other with outstretched arms, 
Across the narrow isthmus of the creeds." 



" Her creed? Ah me ! she was not one 

Who thought her own the only way, 

And thanked her God, like him of old 

Who ' went up ' in his pride to pray. 

1 The Christian Register. 



98 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" But, pressing on her upward road, 

She strove to win all hearts for heaven, 
And counted no man wholly lost 
Who lived, so yet might be forgiven. 

" She knew heaven's gate was opened wide, 
She knew how great the joy within ; 
And, in her perfect charity, 

She would have had all enter in." a 



" 'Tis not the wide phylactery, 
Nor stubborn fast nor stated prayers, 
That makes us saints : we judge the tree 
By what it bears." 2 



" Think truly, and thy thought 
Shall the world's famine feed ; 
Speak truly, and thy word 
Shall be a faithful seed ; 
Live truly, and thy life shall be 
A great and noble creed." 

1 Sunday Magazine. 2 Alice Cary. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 99 



XXVI. 

The foregoing ten aspects are not entirely 
comprehensive. There are certain other ten- 
dencies to change, which will readily occur to 
any pensive observer. On the old question of 
Free Agency and Necessity there is possibly 
less divergence than formerly. Arthur Scho- 
penhauer, in an essay which obtained the prize 
of the Danish Academy, on the " Freedom of 
the Will," says: — 

" The consciousness which men claim to have of free- 
dom of choice is illusory. The self-consciousness of every 
man tells him distinctly that he can do what he will ; and, 
as he is capable of conceiving of entirely opposite acts as 
willed by him, it follows, of course, that he can perform 
either of those acts if he will. Hence, the rude mind, con- 
founding things that are very different, concludes that in a 
given case a man can will opposite acts, and calls this 
freedom of the will. But that is not what consciousness 
really says. What it says is that, of two opposite acts, a 
man can do this one if he will, or that one if he will ; but 



100 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

whether he can will the one as well as the other in a given 
case remains undecided. That is the matter for deeper 
investigation, and lies beyond the reach of conscious- 
ness. . . . Are two modes of action possible to a given 
individual under given conditions, or only one? The 
answer of all deep thinkers is, ' Only one.' . . . All 
that happens, from the greatest to the least, happens 
necessarily.'" 

It may be objected that this view encourages 
fatalism. But fatalism is not a doctrine ; it is 
a quality of temper. The Mohammedan fatalist 
is governed by a consciousness of that necessity 
which to a healthy Christian mind is only a 
speculative conclusion. The latter acts with 
that conscious free agency which is not incon- 
sistent with a latent necessity. 

So also is there a tendency to more impartial 
research concerning prophecy, presentiment, 
hypnotism, and mind-reading. The Society of 
Psychical Research has lately been carrying on 
an inquiry into dreams of presentiment, with a 
view to discovering how many such prove to be 
really prophetic. It is seeking absolute proof 
wherever it is possible, by asking that the dream 
shall be communicated to them at once, and 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 101 

without waiting for its fulfilment. This Ayas 
doubtless done to avoid the objection urged 
against the inquiries made by the British Society 
into presentiments, apparitions of dying friends, 
etc., where it was found that there was in no 
case absolute proof that the fact of the appear- 
ance had been put down in black and white 
before the alleged fulfilment. 

Professor H. W. Parker 1 has adduced many 
arguments not from revelation, but by analogy, 
for believing that there is all about us a world 
of life we do not see and cannot grasp because 
of the limitations of sense. 

" The human eye is blind to a large number of the wave 
lengths of the spectrum. The human ear is deaf to nine- 
tenths of the possible vibrations of the air, so far as it has 
been possible to measure them. If this be so of the world 
which appeals to the senses, what shall be said of that 
other world which the intuition of man, even in the most 
matter-of-fact surroundings, shows him to be equally real. 
The materialist disposes of the visions of the dying, in 
which they see again the loved ones who have gone before 
them, by claiming that these are simply the creatures of 
delirium, in which memory and affection combine to repro- 

1 In The Forum. 



102 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

duce cherished images. But what shall be said of similar 
visions in children, too young to have such memories or 
conceptions, who describe with joy the bright pictures 
opened before their dying gaze ? This is said, not to give 
any countenance to the gross assumptions of Spiritualism, 
but as a reminder that science, which is, after all, a vast 
aggregation of inferences, goes far beyond reasonable 
bounds when it affirms, as many of its votaries do, that 
only that exists which is cognizable by the senses. In 
this they sin not only against analogy, but against known 
facts." 1 

1 See Appendix " D," for additional illustrations of the present 
progress of investigations into these and kindred subjects; espe- 
cially the incidents respectively excerpted from The (St. Louis) 
Spectator, The (Brookline) Chronicle, The (Boston) Saturday 
Evening Gazette, and The (Chicago) Times. See also in The 
Christian Register, page 421 (reprinted from the Contemporary 
Review), an article by Frances Power Cobbe, on " Faith-Healing 
and Hypnotism." See also in The Youth's Companion, for 
Sept. 1, 1887, an article by William A. Hammond, M.D., on 
"Illusions and Hallucinations." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. IO3 



XXVII. 



Another change is noticeable ; namely, in 
pulpit oratory and in the public taste thereon. 
There is a tendency to abate Orientalism and 
hyperbole. No longer is it "good form" for 
a model sermon to be as diffuse and repeti- 
tious as the third chapter of Daniel. A "four- 
teenthly " would find a frown — or a smile. 
Indeed, the necessity of palavering even up to 
a "seventhly" to support a given dogma would 
be taken as a presumption of its weakness. 
Certain cant expressions are obsolescent. Each 
Protestant gentleman avoids uttering that old 
pet phrase of the ascetic, "the immaculate con- 
ception," that century-old slur against his own 
mother, against your mother, against my mother. 
Nor is it generally considered in good taste for a 
sermon to contain — unescorted by any substan- 
tiating argument — arrogant bombast against 
"evolution," "agnosticism," or "unbelief." 



104 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" There is no unbelief. 
Whoever plants a leaf beneath the sod, 
And waits to see it push away the clod, 
He trusts in God. 

" Whoever says, when clouds are in the sky, 
* Be patient, heart, light breaketh by and by,* 
Trusts the Most High. 

" The heart that looks on when the eyelids close, 
And dares to live when life has only woes, 
God's comfort knows. 

* ' There is no unbelief. 
And, day by day and night, unconsciously 
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny. 
God knows the why." 

It is also noticeable in sermons that optimistic 
"trimmings" are growing more and more fash- 
ionable. One of the very best discourses ever 
heard by the writer (who is a layman, and who 
has listened to a sermon or two almost every 
Sunday for the last half century) was preached 
in an Orthodox Congregational pulpit in west- 
ern Massachusetts, May 19, 1889, by the princi- 
pal of a prominent educational institute, upon 
the text, " Prove all things, hold fast that which 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 105 

is good/' The speaker closed with an unpre- 
tentious recital of a pertinent poem of several 
stanzas, which, although the discourse had been 
of the full average length, and replete with 
weighty thought, was received by all with 
breathless eagerness. Its theme was the con- 
solation afforded by certain simple eternal veri- 
ties, — 

" I know that right is right, 11 etc., 

and it served wonderfully to fix in our hearts 
forever the uplifting effect of the preceding 
matter. This is by no means a solitary instance 
of the value of a single, judicious, hopeful poeti- 
cal quotation in well-rounded, comprehensive 
sermons lately heard by the writer, or gleaned 
from the Monday morning summaries in our 
dailies. The following illustrative examples 
may be found worth saving here : — 

" He who hath led will lead 

All through the wilderness ; 
He who hath fed will feed ; 

He who hath blessed will bless ; 
He who hath heard thy cry 

Will never close his ear ; 



106 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

He who hath marked thy faintest sigh 

Will not forget thy tear. 
He loveth always, faileth never ; 
So rest on Him to-day, forever ! 

" He who hath made thee whole 

Will lead thee day by day ; 
He who hath spoken to thy soul 

Hath many things to say ; 
He who hath gently taught, 

Yet more will make thee know ; 
He who so wondrously hath wrought, 

Yet greater things will show. 
He loveth always, faileth never ; 
So rest on Him to-day, forever ! " 1 



" Even for the dead I will not bind 
My soul to grief — death cannot long divide ; 
For is it not as if the rose had climbed 
My garden wall and blossomed on the other side ? " 2 



u Oh, bide no longer in the far-off sphere, 
Though all heaven's cohorts should thy footsteps stay. 
Break through their splendid militant array, 
And answer to my call, O dead and dear ! n 3 

1 Frances Ridley Havergal. 2 Alice Cary. 

3 Louise Chandler Moulton. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 107 

' We front the sun, and on the purple ridges, 
The virgin future lifts her veil of snow, 

Look backward, and an arch of splendor bridges 
The gulf of Long Ago." 



" The stars look down as fair and bright 
On hill and plain and stream, 
As when the prophet watched at night 
Their silver shining beam.'" 1 



11 At end of love, at end of life, 
At end of hope, at end of strife, 
At end of all we cling to so, 
The sun is setting — must we go ? 

" At dawn of love, at dawn of life, 
At dawn of peace that follows strife, 
At dawn of all we long for so, 
The sun is rising — let us go." 2 



" This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze 
But is the echo of some voice beloved ; 
Its pines have human tones ; its billows wear 
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes ; 
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands 
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful 

1 Moody Currier. 2 Harper's Monthly, June, 1885. 



108 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

Because of something lovelier than themselves, 
Which breathes within them and will never die ; 
Haunted, but not with any spectral gloom, 
Earth is suffused, inhabited by heaven. 1 " 



" We must not look across — looking in vain — 
But downward to the next close step, 
And up. Eyes which have wept 
Must look a little way, not far, 
God broke our years to hours and days, that hour by hour, 
And day by day, 
Just going on a little way, 
We might be able, all along, 

To keep quite strong. 
Should all the weight of life 
Be laid across our shoulders, and the future, rife 
With woe and struggle, meet us face to face 
At just one place, 
We could not go ; 
Our feet would stop ; and so 
God lays a little on us every day, 
And never, I believe, on all the way, 
Will burdens bear so deep, 
Or pathways lie so steep, 
But we can go, if, by God's power, 
We only bear the burden of the hour." x 

1 "George Klingle " (Mrs. Georgiana K. Holmes), in Make 
Thy Way Mine, and Other Poems. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. IO9 

44 Oh, happy they who saw. Our eyes are dim, 

And faint our hearts, with striving, heat, and dust ; 
And devious the road, although in Him 

Who guides the starry round is our sure trust. 

44 Men have sought out so many newer ways 
That fork and interweave, 'tis hard to find 
The grass-grown, narrow track amid the maze ; 
And with much searching for it we go blind. 

44 So long, so weary, long and far since when 
The nightly heavens did with portent shine : 
Such swarming myriads of brother men 

Have been and disappeared and made no sign. 

44 Our ears are dull with hearing overmuch ; 

The story told a thousand times grows cold — 
Oh for another flame-lipped prophet, such 
As set on fire the people's hearts of old ! 

44 Once more, once more, if on our longing sight 
Might flash the radiant messenger that came 
Upon the shepherds as they watched by night, 
With tidings of great joy in glad acclaim. 

44 If o'er us on the sky once more might gleam 
The herald star's ecstatic blazonry — 
How should we rise and bid it onward stream, 
And follow, follow, over land or sea ! " 1 

1 The December Cosmopolitan. 



IIO ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" The copyist group was gathered round 
A time-worn fresco, world-renowned, 
Whose central glory once had been 
The face of Christ, the Nazarene. 

" And every copyist of the crowd 
With his own soul that face endowed. 
Gentle, severe, majestic, mean ; 
But which was Christ, the Nazarene? 

" Then one who watched them made complaint 
And marvelled, saying, ' Wherefore paint 
Till ye be sure your eyes have seen 
The face of Christ, the Nazarene ? ' " x 



" O modern church, to thine own self be true; 

Live not content with thine heroic past, 
So long as labor waits for thee to do : 

Nor deem thy crown has come to thee at last. 
Truth still pleads, barefoot, at the convent gate, 
While error sits enthroned amid the great. 

" When time shall see thee mumbling o'er a creed, 
Praying within thy pale for faith, not light, 

Thine eyes averted from thy brother's need, 
A craven champion of imperilled right, 

Then from thy tottering temple Truth shall fly 

To wider limits and a freer sky." 2 

1 Constance Naden. 2 Abba Gould Woolson. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. Ill 

" Sweet friend, when thou and I are gone 

Beyond earth's weary labor ; 
When small shall be our need of grace 

From comrade or from neighbor ; 
Passed all the strife, the toil, the care, 

And done with all the sighing, 
What tender ruth shall we have gained, 

Alas, by simply dying? 

" Then lips too chary of their praise 

Will tell our merits over, 
And eyes too swift our faults to see, 

Shall no defect discover. 
Then hands that would not lift a stone 

Where stones were thick to cumber 
Our steep hill path, will scatter flowers 

Above our pillowed slumber. 

" Sweet friend, perchance both thou and I, 

Ere love is past forgiving, 
Should take the earnest lesson home : 

Be patient with the living. 
To-day's repressed rebuke may save 

Our blinding tears to-morrow ; 
Then patience, e'en when keenest edge 

May whet a nameless sorrow ! 

" 'Tis easy to be gentle when 

Death's silence shames our clamor ; 



112 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

And easy to discern the best 

Through memory's mystic glamour. 

But wise it were for thee and me, 
Ere love is past forgiving, 

To take the tender lesson home : 
Be patient with the living." 1 



" Whether between lie meadows green 

Where sun and shadow play, 
Or silent snowfields intervene 

With trees of leafless gray, 
Or stately hills send down supplies 

To blue lakes at their feet, 
Beyond them all I seek the line 

Where earth and heaven meet. 

" Sometimes remote it seems and dim, 

Through earthly mists that rise ; 
Again distinct and clear it stands 

Before my longing eyes. 
O faces loved I may not see, 

O lips I may not greet, 
Till life's horizon line I reach 

Where earth and heaven meet ! " 2 

1 Christian Advocate. 

2 Rebecca Palfrey Utter, in the " King's Daughter, and Other 
Poems." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. II3 

" In the bitter waves of woe, 
Beaten and tossed about 
By the sullen winds that blow 

From the desolate shores of doubt, 

" When the anchors that faith had cast 
Are dragging in the gale, 
I am quietly holding fast 

To the things that cannot fail. 

" I know that right is right ; 
That it is not good to lie ; 
That love is better than spite, 
And a neighbor than a spy. 

" I know that passion needs 
The leash of a sober mind ; 
I know that generous deeds 
Some sure reward will find ; 

' \ That the rulers must obey ; 

That the givers shall increase ; 
That Duty lights the way 

For the beautiful feet of Peace ; 

" In the darkest night of the year, 
When the stars have all gone out, 
That courage is better than fear, 
That faith is truer than doubt. 



114 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" And fierce though the fiends may fight, 
And long though the angels hide, 
I know that Truth and Right 
Have the universe on their side ; 

" And that somewhere beyond the stars 
Is a Love that is better than fate ; 
When the night unlocks her bars 
I shall see him ; and I will wait." x 



* * I would receive my sight ; my clouded eyes 
Miss the glad radiance of the morning sun, 
The changing tints that glorify the skies 

With roseate splendors when the day is done ; 
The shadows soft and gray, the pearly light 
Of summer twilight deep'ning into night. 

" I cannot see to keep the narrow way, 

And so I blindly wander here and there, 
Groping amidst the tombs, or helpless stray 

Through pathless, tangled deserts, bleak and bare ; 
Weeping I seek the way I cannot find — 
Open my eyes, dear Lord, for I am blind. 

" And oft I laugh with some light, thoughtless jest, 
Nor see how anguish lines some face most dear, 

1 Washington Gladden. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. I I 5 

And write my mirth, a mocking palimpsest — 
On blotted scrolls of human pain and fear ; 
And never see the heartache interlined — 
Pity, O Son of David ! I am blind. 

" I do not see the pain my light words give, 

The quivering, shrinking heart I cannot see ; 

So, light of thought, midst hidden griefs I live, 
And mock the cypressed tombs with sightless glee ; 

Open my eyes, light, blessed ways to find — 

Jesus, have mercy on me — I am blind. 

" My useless eyes are reservoirs of tears, 

Doomed for their blind mistakes to overflow ; 
To weep for thoughtless ways of wandering years, 

Because I could not see — I did not know. 
These sightless eyes — than angriest glance less kind — 
Light of the World, have pity ! I am blind." * 



1 When I pass out to the light, 
From dark to exceeding bright, 
From cold to the warmth of the sun, 
How shall that good be won ? 

What is the way for me ? 

Master, how shall it be? 

1 Robert J. Burdette. 



Il6 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" How if the longed-for way 
Which I hunger for to-day, 
Which I pray for with eager breath, 
Should be the way called death? 
Were this the way for me, 
Master, how would it be? 

" How if the way I seek 
With footsteps weary and weak, 
Scarcely able to move, 
Should be the way called love : 
Were this the way for me, 
Master, how would it be? 

" How if the way I desire 

Should lie through the heart of the fire, 

And glowing bonds amain 

Clasp me in utter pain? 

Were this the way for me, 
Master, how would it be ? 

" I know not, dear my Lord ; 

Humbly I stay thy word ; 

Through death, love, pain, I need 

Only Thy hand to lead ; 

And the one true way for me, 
Master, is trusting Thee." 1 

1 Emily H. Hickey. 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 117 

" When passing southward, I may cross the line 
Between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, 
I may not tell, by any test of mine, 

By any startling signs or strange commotions 
Across my track ; 

11 But if the days grow sweeter, one by one, 

And e'en the icebergs melt their hardened faces, 
And sailors linger, basking in the sun, 

I know I must have made the change of places 
Some distance back ! 

" When answering timidly the Master's call, 

I passed the bourne of life in coming to Him ; 
When in my love for Him I gave up all — 

The very moment when I thought I knew Him, 
I cannot tell. 

" But as unceasingly I feel his love — 

As this cold heart is melted to o'erflowing — 
And now so dear the light comes from above, 
I wonder at the change — and move on, knowing 
That all is well. 



" Enough if something from our hand hath power 
To live and move and serve the future hour, 

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, [dower, 

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent 

We feel that we are greater than we know.'" 1 

1 Wordsworth; from a sonnet quoted by Dr. Dykes, I believe, 
after saying : " We are the children of our own deeds. Conduct 



Il8 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

" When Solomon had tried all earthly good 
And found it vanity, his heart grew cold. 
' Why should I live? ' he said, ' Is it not best 
To die and be no more ? ' And thus he wrote 
In the last volume of his many rolls 
The final thought of all that varied life : 
The weary record of a tired-out soul. 
' Lo ! all is vanity ! Things come and go, 
Tending to nothing. Knowledge helps us not. 
Labor is vain. Beauty deceives the heart. 
Better to die than live ; better than both 
Not to be born. For all is vanity.' 
And thus despair came to the wise man's soul, 
And in the hopeless darkness of his mind 
He wandered forth into the wilderness. 

" There, seated by a wretched hut, he found 
A blind old man, lonely and weak and poor : 
And the king asked, ' What art thou doing here? ' 
He answered, ' I am thinking of the joy 
God sends into the world, and to my heart. 
I feel the blessed sunshine, I can hear 
The cheerful song of birds, the melody 
Of rushing waters, winds which sweep the trees. 
I think " How good is life, how sweet to live ! W1 
The king, astonished at such strange content, 
Replied. * But thou art lonely, weak, and blind.' 

has created character; acts have grown into habits; each year 
has pressed into us a deeper moral print; the lives we have led 
have left us such as we are to-day." 



ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. I 19 

" * O ! not so lonely, 1 he replied. ' Each day 
I have around me all the images 
Of the dear friends of youth ; the loving souls 
Most loved by me ; then, now, and ever mine. 
Their eyes look love. I feel the gentle touch 
Of infant fingers, hear the whispered voice 
Of father, brother, friend. Am I alone? 

" * Yes ! God has closed mine outward eye, but not 
The eye within — the eye of memory. 
Sweet visions come before me when I will : 
My childhood's home amid the soft green hills, 
The pale horizon, shadowed vale, and trees 
Majestic, graceful, lit with morning sun. 

" * Yes ! I am useless, helpless. But I think 
That, if God will, my words may sometimes rouse 
A better thought in others, or may give 
A little hope to some poor weary heart.' 

" Thoughtful the king returned, unrolled his book, 
And added to the leaf another line : 
' Fear God and do his will, for this is all.' " 1 

I am not aware that any of the foregoing 
quotations are to be found in any hymnal. 2 But 

1 Quoted anonymously by Dr. J. F. Clarke, at the end of his 
Sermon on the text : "All things are yours"; preached in the 
Church of the Disciples early in 1886. 

2 For nearly two hundred similar gems of devout poetry from 
almost as many different American and English poets and poet- 



120 ELSMERE ELSEWHERE. 

there is a hymn x by the sweet veteran poet, John 
Greenleaf Whittier, LL.D., without which no 
hymnal will henceforth be deemed complete, 
and than which nothing can more pertinently 
conclude this little essay : — 

" Oh, sometimes gleams upon our sight, 
Through present wrong, the eternal Right ; 
And step by step, since time began, 
We see the steady gain of man. 

" That all of good the past hath had 
Remains to make our own time glad, 
Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine. 

" Through the harsh noises of our day, 
A low, sweet prelude finds its way ; 
Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear, 
A light is breaking, calm and clear. 

" Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more 
For olden time and holier shore ; 
God's love and blessing, then and there, 
Are now and here and everywhere. 1 ' 

esses, — the greater part not yet in any hymnal. — See " The 
Life of Lives," etc. lately published by Macdonald & Co., Boston. 
1 In the " Hymn and Tune Book for Church and Home," 
No. 481, it is set to " Hamburg." 



APPENDIX. 



Harnack is a man of great ability and extraordinary 
industry, largely read in Germany, and beginning to be 
largely read here. As compared with the state of knowl- 
edge thirty years ago, when the Tubingen school was at 
its height, his verdict on the knowledge of to-day is sim- 
ply this: "Richer in historical points of view." Not a 
word of an "attack" which has "failed." "We have 
grown more realistic, more elastic ; the historical temper 
has developed ; we have acquired the power of transplant- 
ing ourselves into other times. Great historians — men 
like Ranke — have taught us this. Then we have real- 
ized that religion and church history is a mere section of 
the whole history of a period, and cannot be understood 
except in relation to that whole." 

Two books, in particular, occur to me as representing 
this most recent phase of development: Schurers " Ge- 
schichte des jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi,* 1 and 
Hausratrfs " Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. 11 In the 
first you have a minute study of all the social and intellec- 



122 APPENDIX A. 

tual elements in the life of Judea and Judaism generally, 
at the time of the appearance of Christianity. In the sec- 
ond you have the same materials, only handled in a more 
consecutive and artistic way, and as a setting, first for the 
life of Jesus, and afterwards for the history of the Apos- 
tles. If you compare them with Strauss, you see with 
startling clearness how far we have travelled in half a cen- 
tury. There, an empty background, an effaced personality, 
and in its stead the play of philosophical abstraction. 
Here, a landscape of extraordinary detail and realism, 
peopled with the town and country populations which be- 
long to it ; Pharisee and Essene, Sadducee and Hellenist, 
standing out with the dress and utterance and gesture of 
each ; and in their midst the figure which is at last becom- 
ing real, intelligible, human, as it has never yet been, and 
which in these latter days we are beginning again to see 
with something of the vision of those who first loved and 
obeyed. 

Men like Harnack and Hausrath have no quarrel with 
Christian testimony ; they have merely learnt not to ask 
of it more than it can give. They have come to recognize 
that it was conditioned by certain necessities of culture, 
certain laws of thought, that in a time which had no con- 
ception of history, or of accurate historical reporting in 
our sense, — a time which produced the allegorical inter- 
pretations of Alexandria, the Rabbinical interpretations of 
St. Paul and the Gospels, the historical method of Jo- 
sephus, the superstitions of Justin and Papias, the childish 
criticism and information of Irenaeus, and the mass of 



APPENDIX A. 123 

pseudepigraphic literature meeting us at every turn be- 
fore, in and after the New Testament, — it is useless to 
expect to find a history which is not largely legend, a tra- 
dition which is not largely delusion. Led by experience 
gathered, not only from Christian history, but from all 
history, they expect beforehand what the Christian docu- 
ments reveal. They see a sense of history so weak that, 
in preserving the tradition of the Lord, it cannot keep 
clear and free from manifest contradiction even the most 
essential facts, not even the native place of his parents, 
the duration of his ministry, the date of his death, the 
place and time and order of the Resurrection appearances, 
the length of the mysterious period intervening between 
the Resurrection and the Ascension ; and in preserving the 
tradition of the Apostles, it cannot record with certainty 
for their disciples even the most essential facts as to their 
later lives, the scenes of their labors, the manner of their 
deaths. On all these points the documents show naively 
— as all early traditions do — the most irreconcilable discrep- 
ancies. The critical historian could have foretold them ; 
finds them the most natural thing in the world. On the 
other hand, he grows familiar, as the inquiry goes deeper, 
with that fund of fancy and speculation, of superstitious 
belief, or nationalist hope in the mind of the first Christian 
period, the bulk of which he knows to be much older than 
Jesus of Nazareth, and wherein he can trace the elements 
which conditioned the activity of the master, and colored 
all the thoughts of his primitive followers about him. He 
measures the strength of these fantastic or poetical con- 



124 APPENDIX A. 

ceptions of nature and history by the absence, or weakness, 
in the society producing them, of that controlling, logical 
and scientific instinct which it has been the work of suc- 
ceeding centuries, of the toil of later generations, to de- 
velop in mankind ; and when he sees the passion of the 
Messianic hope, or the Persian and Parsee conceptions of 
an unseen world which the course of history had grafted 
on Judaism, or the Hellenistic speculation with which the 
Jewish Dispersion was everywhere penetrated, or the mere 
natural love of marvel which every populace possesses, and 
more especially an Eastern populace — when he watches 
these forces either shaping the consciousness of Jesus, or 
dictating the forms of belief and legend and dogma in 
which his followers cast the love and loyalty roused by a 
great personality — this also he could have foretold, this 
also is the most natural thing in the world. For to real- 
ize the necessity, the inevitableness, of these three features 
in the story of Christianity, he has only to look out on the 
general history of religions, of miracle, of sacred biogra- 
phy, of inspired books, to see the same forces and the 
same processes repeating themselves all over the religious 
field. 

So in the same way with the penetration and success of 
Christianity — the " moral miracle," which is to convince 
us of Christian dogma when the appeal to physical mira- 
cle fails. To the historian there is no miracle, moral or 
physical, in the matter, any more than there is in the rise 
of Buddhism, or of any other of those vast religious sys- 
tems with which the soil of history is strewn. He sees 



APPENDIX B. 125 

the fuel of a great ethical and spiritual movement long in 
preparation from many sides, kindled into flame by that 
spark of a great personality — a life of genius, a tragic 
death. He sees the movement shaping itself to the poetry, 
myth, and philosophy already existing when it began ; he 
sees it producing a new literature, instinct with a new pas- 
sion, simplicity, and feeling. He watches it as time goes 
on, appropriating the strength of Roman institutions, the 
subtleties of Greek thought, and although in every reli- 
gious history, nay, in every individual history, there remain 
puzzles and complexities which belong to the mysteries of 
the human organization, and which no critical process, 
however sympathetic, can ever completely fathom, still, at 
the end the Christian problem is nearer a detailed solution 
for him than some others of the great religious problems 
of the world. How much harder for a European really to 
understand the vast spread and empire of Buddhism, its 
first rise, its tenacious hold on human life. — Mrs. Mary 
A. Ward, in The Nineteenth Century, March, 1889: 
Article, The New Reformation. 



The question of the day is so completely, as the author 
of " Robert Elsmere' 1 says, the value of testimony that I 
shall offer no apology for following it out somewhat in 
detail ; and by way of giving substance to the argument, 
I shall base what I have to say upon a case, the considera- 



126 APPENDIX B. 

tion of which lies strictly within the province of natural 
science, and of that particular part of it known as the 
physiology and pathology of the nervous system. 

I find in the second Gospel (chap, v.), a statement, to 
all appearance intended to have the same evidential value 
as any other contained in that history. It is the well- 
known story of the devils who were cast out of a man, and 
ordered or permitted, to enter into a herd of swine, to the 
great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene, or Gada- 
rene, pig-owner. There can be no doubt that the narrator 
intends to convey to his readers his own conviction that 
this casting out and entering in were effected by the agency 
of Jesus of Nazareth ; that by speech and action, Jesus 
enforced this condition ; nor does any inkling of the legal 
and moral difficulties of the case manifest itself. . . . 

The third Gospel confirms the second in the matter of 
commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man 
(Luke vii. 29) ; and, although the first Gospel either gives 
a different version of the same story, or tells another of 
like kind, the essential point remains: "If thou cast us 
out, send us away into the herd of swine. And he said 
unto them: Go!" (Matt. viii. 31, 32). 

If the concurrent testimony of the three synoptics, then, 
is really sufficient to do away with all rational doubt as to 
a matter of fact of the utmost practical and speculative 
importance — belief or disbelief in which may affect, and 
has affected men's lives and their conduct towards other 
men in the most serious way — then I am bound to believe 
that Jesus implicitly affirmed himself to possess a " knowl- 



APPENDIX B. 127 

edge of the unseen world, 11 which afforded full confirma- 
tion to the belief in demons and possession current among 
his contemporaries. If the story is true, the mediaeval 
theory of the invisible world may be, and probably is, quite 
correct ; and the witchfinders, from Sprenger to Hopkins 
and Mather are much-maligned men. 

On the other hand, humanity, noting the frightful con- 
sequences of this belief; common sense, observing the 
futility of the evidence on which it is based, in all cases 
that have been properly investigated ; science, more and 
more seeing its way to enclose all the phenomena of so 
called " possession " within the domain of pathology, so 
far as they are not to be relegated to that of the police — 
all these powerful influences concur in warning us, at our 
peril, against accepting the belief without the most careful 
scrutiny of the authority on which it rests. 

I can discern no escape from this dilemma ; either 
Jesus said what he is reported to have said, or he did not. 
In the former case, it is inevitable that his authority on 
matters connected with the "unseen world 11 should be 
roughly shaken ; in the latter, the blow falls upon the 
authority of the synoptic Gospels. If their report on a 
matter of such stupendous and far-reaching practical import 
as this is untrustworthy, how can w r e be sure of its trust- 
worthiness in other cases? The favorite " earth 11 in which 
the hard-pressed reconciler takes refuge, that the Bible 
does not profess to teach science, is stopped in this in- 
stance. For the question of the existence of demons and 
of possession by them, though it be strictly within the 



128 APPENDIX B. 

province of science, is also of the deepest moral and 
religious significance. If physical and mental disorders 
are caused by demons, Gregory of Tours and his contem- 
poraries rightly considered that relics and exorcists were 
more useful than doctors ; the gravest questions arise as 
to the legal and moral responsibilities of persons inspired 
by demoniacal impulses ; and our whole conception of the 
universe and of our relations to it becomes totally different 
from what it would be on the contrary hypothesis. 

The theory of life of an average mediaeval Christian was 
as different from that of an average nineteenth-century 
Englishman as that of a West-African negro is now in 
these respects. The modern world is slowly but surely 
shaking off these and other monstrous survivals of savage 
delusions, and, whatever happens, it will not return to 
that wallowing in the mire. Until the contrary is proved, 
I venture to doubt w T hether, at this present moment any 
Protestant theologian, who has a reputation to lose, will 
say that he believes the Gadarene story. 

The choice, then, lies between discrediting those who 
compiled the Gospel biographies, and disbelieving the 
Master, whom they, simple souls, thought to honor by 
preserving such traditions of the exercise of his authority 
over Satan's invisible world. This is the dilemma. No 
deep scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the Revised 
Version (on which it is to be supposed all that mere schol- 
arship can do has been done), with the application thereto 
of the commonest canons of common sense, is needful to 
enable us to make a choice between its horns. It is hardly 



APPENDIX B. 129 

doubtful that the story, as told in the first Gospel, is merely 
a version of that told in the second and third. Neverthe- 
less, the discrepancies are serious and irreconcilable ; and, 
on this ground alone, a suspension of judgment is at the 
least called for. 

But there is a great deal more to be said. From the 
dawn of scientific-biblical criticism until the present day 
the evidence against the long-cherished notion that the 
three synoptic Gospels are the works of three independent 
authors, each prompted by divine inspiration, has steadily 
accumulated, until, at the present time, there is no visible 
escape from the conclusion that each of the three is a 
compilation, consisting of a groundwork common to all 
three, — the threefold tradition, — and of a superstructure, 
consisting, firstly, of matter common to it with one of the 
others, and, secondly, of matter special to each. The use 
of the terms ''groundwork" and " superstructure " by no 
means implies that the latter must be of a date later than 
the former. On the contrary, some parts of it may be, 
and probably are, older than some parts of the ground- 
work. 1 

The story of the Gadarene swine belongs to the ground- 
work, at least the essential part of it, in which the belief 
in demoniac possession is expressed, does ; and therefore 
the compilers of the first, second, and third Gospels, 
whoever they were, certainly accepted that belief (which, 

1 See Dr. Abbott's article on the Gospels in the Encyclope- 
dia Britannica ; also Professor Volkmar's monograph, " Jesus 
Nazarenus und die erste christliche Zeit " (1882). 



I30 APPENDIX B. 

indeed, was universal among both Jews and pagans at that 
time), and attributed it to Jesus. 

What, then, do we know about the originator or origi- 
nators of this groundwork — of that threefold tradition 
which all three witnesses (in Paley's phrase) agree upon — 
that we should allow their mere statements to outweigh 
the counter arguments of humanity, of common sense, of 
exact science, and to imperil the respect which all would 
be glad to be able to render to their Master ? 

Absolutely nothing. There is no proof, nothing more 
than a fair presumption, that any one of the Gospels ex- 
isted, in the state in which we find it in the authorized 
version of the Bible, before the second century, or, in 
other words, sixty or seventy years after the events re- 
corded. And between that time and the date of the oldest 
extant manuscripts of the Gospels there is no telling what 
additions and alterations and interpolations may have been 
made. It may be said that this is all mere speculation, 
but it is a good deal more. As competent scholars and 
honest men, our revisers have felt compelled to point out 
that such things have happened ever since the date of the 
oldest known manuscripts. The oldest two copies of the 
second Gospel end with the eighth verse of the sixteenth 
chapter. The remaining twelve verses are spurious, and 
it is noteworthy that the maker of the addition has not 
hesitated to introduce a speech in which Jesus promises his 
disciples that " In My name shall they cast out devils." 

The other passage "rejected to the margin" is still 
more instructive. It is that touching apologue, with its 



APPENDIX B. 131 

profound ethical sense, of the woman taken in adultery, 
which, if internal evidence were an infallible guide, might 
well be affirmed to be a typical example of the teachings 
of Jesus. " Yet," say the revisers pitilessly, " most of the 
ancient authorities omit John vii. 53-viii. 11." Now, let 
any reasonable man ask himself this question. If, after an 
approximative settlement of the canon of the New Testa- 
ment, and even later than the fourth and fifth centuries, 
literary fabricators had the skill and the audacity to make 
such additions and interpolations as these, what may they 
have done when no one had thought of a canon, when 
oral tradition, still unfixed, was regarded as more valuable 
than such written records as may have existed in the latter 
portion of the first century? Or, to take the other alterna- 
tive, if those who gradually settled the canon did not know 
of the existence of the oldest codices which have come 
down to us. or, if. knowing them, they rejected their 
authority, what is to be thought of their competency as 
critics of the text? 

People who object to free criticism of the Christian 
Scriptures forget that they are what they are in virtue of 
very free criticism ; unless the advocates of inspiration are 
prepared to affirm that the majority of influential ecclesias- 
tics, during several centuries, were safeguarded against 
error. For, even granting that some books of the period 
were inspired, they were certainly few amongst many, and 
those who selected the canonical books, unless they them- 
selves were also inspired, must be regarded in the light of 
mere critics, and, from the evidence they have left of their 



132 APPENDIX B. 

intellectual habits, very uncritical critics. When one thinks 
that such delicate questions as those involved fell into the 
hands of men like Papias (who believed in the famous mil- 
lenarian grape story); of Irenaeus, with his "reasons" 
for the existence of only four Gospels ; and of such calm 
and dispassionate judges as Tertullian, with his "credo 
quia impossibile" the marvel is that the selection which 
constitutes our New Testament is as free as it is from ob- 
viously objectionable matter. The apocryphal Gospels 
certainly deserve to be apocryphal ; but one may suspect 
that a little more critical discrimination would have en- 
larged the apocrypha not inconsiderably. 

At this point an obvious objection deserves considera- 
tion. It maybe said that critical scepticism carried to the 
length suggested is historical pyrrhonism ; that if we are 
to altogether discredit an ancient or a modern historian, 
because he has assumed fabulous matter to be true, it will 
be as well to give up paying any attention to history. It 
may be said, and with great justice, that Eginhard^ " Life 
of Charlemagne " is none the less trustworthy because of 
the astounding revelation of credulity, of lack of judg- 
ment, and even of respect, for the eighth commandment, 
which he has unconsciously made in the " History of the 
Translation of the Blessed Martyrs, Marcellinus and Paul." 
Or to go no farther back than the last number of this Re- 
view {Nineteenth Century, January, 1889,] surely that 
excellent lady, Miss Strickland, is not to be refused all 
credence because of the myth about the second James's 
remains, which she seems to have unconsciously invented. 



APPENDIX B. 133 

Of course this is perfectly true. I am afraid there is no 
man alive whose witness could be accepted, if the condi- 
tion precedent were proof that he had never invented and 
promulgated a myth. In the minds of all of us there are 
little places here and there, — like the indistinguishable 
spots on a rock, which give foothold to moss or stone- 
crop, — on which, if the germ of a myth fall, it is certain 
to grow, without in the least degree affecting our accuracy 
or truthfulness elsewhere. Sir Walter Scott knew that he 
could not repeat a story without, as he said, "giving it a 
new hat and stick. 1 ' Most of us differ from Sir Walter 
only in not knowing of this tendency of the mythopceic 
faculty to break out unnoticed. But it is also perfectly 
true that the mythopceic faculty is not equally active on all 
minds, nor in all regions and under all conditions of the 
same mind. David Hume was certainly not so liable to 
temptation as the venerable Bede, or even as some recent 
historians who could be mentioned ; and the most imagi- 
native of debtors, if he owes five pounds, never makes an 
obligation to pay a hundred out of it. The rule of com- 
mon sense is prima facie to trust a witness in all matters 
in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his preju- 
dices, nor that love of the marvellous, which is inherent to 
a greater or less degree in all mankind, are strongly con- 
cerned ; and when they are involved, to require corrobora- 
tive evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of 
probability of the thing testified. In the Gadarene affair, 
I do not think I am unreasonably sceptical if I say that 
the existence of demons who can be transferred from a 



134 APPENDIX C. 

man to a pig does thus contravene probability. — F. H. 
Huxley, in The Nineteenth Century, February, 1889: 
Article, Agnosticism. 1 



The serious question is whether theological men of 
science, or theological special pleaders, are to have the 
confidence of the general public ; it is the question whether 
a country in which it is possible for a body of excellent 
clerical and lay gentlemen to discuss, in public meeting 
assembled, how much it is desirable to let the congrega- 
tions of the faithful know of the results of biblical criticism, 
is likely to wake up with anything short of the grasp of 
a rough lay hand upon its shoulder ; it is the question 
whether the New Testament books, being as I believe 
they were, written and compiled by people who, according 
to their lights, were perfectly sincere, will not, when 
properly studied as ordinary historical documents, afford 
us the means of self criticism. And it must be remem- 
bered that the New Testament books are not responsible 
for the doctrine invented by the churches that they are 

1 Dr. Bartlett, president of Dartmouth College, says: "I do 
not feel at liberty to reject or question the reality of demoniacal 
possession in the time of our Lord. If I were at liberty to re- 
ject that teaching both of Christ and his authorized messengers, 
I should not know w 7 here to stop with my questionings and 
denials." 



APPENDIX C. 135 

anything but ordinary historical documents. The author 
of the third Gospel tells us as straightforwardly as a man 
can, that he has no claim to any other character than that 
of an ordinary compiler and editor, who had before him the 
works of many and variously qualified predecessors. . . . 

If, as I believe to be the case, beyond any rational doubt 
or dispute, the second Gospel is the nearest extant repre- 
sentative of the oldest tradition, whether written or oral, 
how comes it that it contains neither the " Sermon on 
the Mount' 7 nor the "Lord's Prayer' 1 ? Not only does 
"Mark's 11 Gospel fail to contain the "Sermon on the 
Mount, 1 ' or anything but a very few of the sayings con- 
tained in that collection ; but, at the point of the history 
of Jesus where the " Sermon 11 occurs in " Matthew, 11 there 
is in " Mark" an apparently unbroken narrative, from the 
calling of James and John to the healing of Simons wife's 
mother. Thus the eldest tradition not only ignores the 
"Sermon on the Mount 11 but by implication raises a 
probability against its being delivered when and where 
the later " Matthew 11 inserts it in his compilation. 

And still more weighty is the fact that the third Gospel, 
the author of which tells us that he wrote after "many 11 
others had "taken in hand 11 the same enterprise; who 
should therefore have known the first Gospel (if it existed), 
and was bound to pay to it the deference due to the work 
of an apostolic eye-witness (if he had any reason for think- 
ing it was so) — this writer, who exhibits far more literary 
competence than the other two, ignores any " Sermon on 
the Mount, 11 such as that reported by " Matthew,* 1 just as 



I36 APPENDIX C. 

much as the oldest authority does. Yet "Luke" has a 
great many passages identical or parallel with those in 
" Matthew's" " Sermon on the Mount," which are for the 
most part, scattered about in a totally different connec- 
tion. 

Interposed, however, between the nomination of the 
Apostles and a visit to Capernaum ; occupying, therefore, 
a place which answers to that of the " Sermon on the 
Mount " in the first Gospel, there is, in the third Gospel, a 
discourse which is as closely similar to the " Sermon on 
the Mount " in some particulars, as it is widely unlike it 
in others. This discourse is said to have been delivered 
in a " plain" or " level place" (Luke vi. 17), and by way 
of distinction we may call it the " Sermon on the Plain." 

I see no reason to doubt that the two Evangelists are 
dealing with the same traditional material ; and a com- 
parison of the two " Sermons " suggests very strongly that 
Luke's version is the earlier. The correspondences between 
the two forbid the notion that they are independent. They 
both begin with a series of blessings, some of which are 
almost verbally identical. In the middle of each (Luke 
vi. 27-38 ; Matt. v. 43-48) there is a striking exposition of 
the ethical spirit of the command given in Leviticus xix. 
18. And each ends with a passage containing a declara- 
tion that a tree is to be known by its fruit, and the parable 
of the house built on the sand. But while there are only 
29 verses in the " Sermon on the Plain," there are 107 
in the " Sermon on the Mount," the excess in length of 
the latter being chiefly due to the long interpolations, one 



APPENDIX C. 137 

of 30 verses before, and one of 34 verses after the middle- 
most parallelism with Luke. Under these circumstances, 
it is quite impossible to admit that there is more proba- 
bility that " Matthew's" version of the sermon is histori- 
cally accurate than there is that " LukeV 1 version is so ; 
and they cannot both be accurate. 

" Luke" either knew the collection of loosely connected 
and aphoristic utterances which appear under the name of 
the "Sermon on the Mount 1 ' in "Matthew"; or he did 
not. If he did not, he must have been ignorant of the 
existence of such a document as our canonical "Matthew," 
a fact which does not make for the genuineness, or the 
authority of that book. If he did, he has shown that he 
does not care for its authority on a matter of fact of no 
small importance ; and that does not permit us to conceive 
that he believed the first Gospel to be the work of an 
authority to whom he ought to defer, let alone that of an 
apostolic eye-witness. . . . 

Ancient historians of the highest character saw no harm 
in composing long speeches, which never were spoken, and 
putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors ; 
and I presume that whoever is represented by " Matthew" 
would have been grievously astonished to find that any 
one objected to his following the example of the best of 
models accessible to him. . . . 

As to the accounts of what happened after the cruci- 
fixion . . . the inanimate body wrapped in linen was 
deposited in a spacious, cool, rock chamber, the entrance 
of which was closed, not by a well-fitting door, but by a 



I38 APPENDIX C. 

stone rolled against the opening, which would, of course, 
allow free passage of air. A little more than thirty-six 
hours afterwards (Friday, 6 p.m., to Sunday, 6 a.m., or a 
little after) three women visit the tomb and find it empty. 
And they are told by a young man " arrayed in a white 
robe " that Jesus is gone to his native country of Galilee, 
and that the disciples and Peter will find him there. 

Thus it stands, plainly recorded, in the oldest tradition, 
that, for any evidence to the contrary, the sepulchre may 
have been vacated at any time during the Friday or Satur- 
day nights. If it is said that no Jew would have violated 
the Sabbath by taking the former course, it is to be recol- 
lected that Joseph of Arimathaea might well be familiar 
with that wise and liberal interpretation of the fourth com- 
mandment, which permitted works of mercy to men — nay, 
even the drawing of an ox or an ass out of a pit — on the 
Sabbath. At any rate, Saturday night was free to the most 
scrupulous of observers of the law. 

These are the facts of the case as stated by the oldest 
extant narrative of them. I do not see why any one should 
have a word to say against the inherent probability of that 
narrative ; and, for my part, I am quite ready to accept it 
as an historical fact, that so much and no more is posi- 
tively known of the end of Jesus of Nazareth. On what 
grounds can a reasonable man be asked to believe any 
more? So far as the narrative in the first Gospel, on the 
one hand, and in the third Gospel and the Acts, on the 
other, go beyond what is stated in the second Gospel, they 
are hopelessly discrepant with one another. And this is 



APPENDIX C. 139 

the more significant because the pregnant phrase "some 
doubted," in the first Gospel, is ignored in the third. 

But it is said that we have the witness Paul speaking to 
us directly in the Epistles. There is little doubt that we 
have, and a very singular witness he is. According to his 
own showing, Paul, in the vigor of his manhood, with 
every means of becoming acquainted at first hand with the 
evidence of eye-witnesses, not merely refused to credit 
them, but "persecuted the church of God and made havoc 
of it." The reasoning of Stephen fell dead upon the acute 
intellect of this zealot for the traditions of his fathers ; his 
eyes were blind to the ecstatic illumination of the martyr's 
countenance, "as it had been the face of an angel"; and 
when, at the words " Behold, I see the heavens opened, 
and the Son of Alan standing on the right hand of God," 
the murderous mob rushed upon and stoned the rapt dis- 
ciple of Jesus, Paul ostentatiously made himself their offi- 
cial accomplice. 

Yet this strange man, because he has a vision one day, 
at once, and with equally headlong zeal, flies to the oppo- 
site pole of opinion. And he is most careful to tell us 
that he abstained from any re-examination of the facts ; 
" Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood ; neither 
went I up to Jerusalem to them who were apostles before 
me; but I went away into Arabia." (Gal. i. 16, 17.) 

I do not presume to quarrel with Paul's procedure. If 
it satisfied him that was his affair ; and, if it satisfies any 
one else, I am not called upon to dispute the right of that 
person to be satisfied. But I certainly have the right to 



I4O APPENDIX C. 

say that it would not satisfy me, in like case ; that I should 
be very much ashamed to pretend that it could, or ought, 
to satisfy me ; and that I can entertain but a very low esti- 
mate of the value of the evidence of people who are to be 
satisfied in this fashion, when questions of objective fact, 
in which their faith is interested, are concerned. So that 
when I am called upon to believe a great deal more than 
the oldest Gospel tells me about the final events of the 
history of Jesus on the authority of Paul (1 Cor. xv. 5-8), 
I must pause. Did he think it, at any subsequent time, 
worth while " to confer with flesh and blood, " or, in mod- 
ern phrase, to re-examine the facts for himself? or was he 
ready to accept anything that fitted in with his precon- 
ceived ideas ? Does he mean, when he speaks of all the 
appearances of Jesus after the crucifixion as if they were 
of the same kind, that they were all visions, like the mani- 
festation to himself ? And, finally, how is this account to 
be reconciled with those in the first and the third Gospels, 
which, as we have seen, disagree with one another? 

Until these questions are satisfactorily answered, I am 
afraid that, so far as I am concerned, Paul's testimony can- 
not be seriously regarded, except as it may afford evidence 
of the state of traditional opinion at the time at which he 
wrote, say between 55 and 60 a.d. ; that is, more than 
twenty years after the event, a period much more than 
sufficient for the development of any amount of mythology 
about matters of which nothing was really known. A few 
years later, among the contemporaries and neighbors of 
the Jews, and, if the most probable interpretation of the 



APPENDIX C. 141 

Apocalypse can be trusted, among the followers of Jesus 
also, i + was fully believed, in spite of all evidence to the 
contrary, that the Emperor Nero was not really dead, but 
that he was hidden away somewhere in the East, and 
would speedily come again at the head of a great army, to 
be revenged upon his enemies. . . . 

In the first three centuries of its existence the Church 
rapidly underwent a process of evolution of the most re- 
markable character, the final stage of which is far more 
different from the first than Anglicanism is from Quaker- 
ism. The key to the comprehension of the problem of 
the origin of that which is now called " Christianity 11 and 
its relation to Jesus of Nazareth lies here. Nor can we 
arrive at any sound conclusion as to what it is probable 
that Jesus actually said and did without being clear on this 
head. By far the most important and subsequently influ- 
ential steps in the evolution of Christianity took place in 
the course of the century, more or less, which followed 
upon the crucifixion. It is almost the darkest period of 
Church history ; but, most fortunately, the beginning and 
the end of the period are brightly illuminated by the con- 
temporary evidence of two writers of whose historical 
existence there is no doubt, and against the genuineness 
of whose most important works there is no widely admitted 
objection. These are Justin, the philosopher and martyr, 
and Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. I shall call upon 
these witnesses only to testify to the condition of opinion 
among those who called themselves the disciples of Jesus 
in their time. 



142 APPENDIX C. 

Justin, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, enumerates 
eight categories of persons who, in his opinion, will or 
will not be saved. The fourth is : Gentile converts to the 
belief in Jesus as the Christ who observe the Law. Saved. 
. . . The seventh is : Gentiles who believe Jesus to be 
the Christ, and call themselves Christians, but who eat 
meats sacrificed to idols. Not saved. ... At the pres- 
ent moment I do not suppese there is an English mission- 
ary in any heathen land who would trouble himself whether 
the materials of his dinner had been previously offered to 
idols or not. On the other hand, I suppose there is no 
Protestant sect within the pale of orthodoxy, to say noth- 
ing of the Roman and Greek Churches, which would 
hesitate to declare the practice of circumcision and the 
observance of the Jewish Sabbath and dietary rules shock- 
ingly heretical. Modern Christianity has, in fact, not only 
shifted far to the right of Justin's position, but is of much 
narrower compass. . . . Further, there is not a Protestant 
body, except the Unitarians, which would not declare Jus- 
tin himself a heretic on account of his doctrine of the 
inferior godship of the Logos. . . . 

Now let us turn to our other authority. If there is any 
result of critical investigations of the sources of Chris- 
tianity which is certain, it is that Saul of Tarsus wrote the 
Epistle to the Galatians somewhere between the years 55 
and 60 a.d. ; that is to say, roughly, twenty or twenty-five 
years after the crucifixion. This epistle discloses a quarrel, 
in his account of which Paul by no means minces matters, 
or hesitates to hurl defiant sarcasms against those who 



APPENDIX C. 143 

were "reputed to be pillars 11 : James, "the brother of 
the Lord, 11 Peter, the rock on whom Jesus is said to have 
built his church, and John, " the beloved disciple." And 
no deference towards "the rock 11 withholds Paul from 
charging Peter to his face with " dissimulation. 11 

The subject of the hot dispute was simply this. Were 
Gentile converts bound to obey the law or not? Paul 
answered in the negative, and, acting upon his opinion, 
had created at Antioch (and elsewhere) a specifically 
"Christian 11 community, the sole qualifications for admis- 
sion into which were the confession of the belief that Jesus 
was the Messiah, and baptism upon that confession. . . . 
"Behold I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye receive circum- 
cision, Christ will profit you nothing. 11 (Gal. v. 2.) He 
calls the legal observances " beggarly rudiments, 11 and 
anathematizes every one who preaches to the Galatians 
any other Gospel than his own. ... In the first Epistle 
to the Corinthians, dealing with the question of eating 
meat offered to idols, it is clear that Paul himself thinks it 
a matter of indifference ; but he advises that it should not 
be done for the sake of the weaker brethren. On the 
other hand, the Nazarenes of Jerusalem most strenuously 
opposed Paul's Gospel, insisting on every convert becoming 
a regular Jewish proselyte, and consequently on his ob- 
servance of the whole law ; and this party was led by 
James and Peter and John. (Gal. ii. 9.) . . . 

The Acts of the Apostles is hardly a very trustworthy 
history : it is certainly of later date than the Pauline 
Epistles, supposing them to be genuine. And the writers 



144 APPENDIX C. 

version of the conference, of which Paul gives so graphic 
a description, if that is correct, is unmistakably colored 
with all the art of a reconciler, anxious to cover up a 
scandal. But it is none the less instructive on this ac- 
count. The judgment of the " council " delivered by 
James is, that the Gentile converts shall merely ''abstain 
from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood and from 
things strangled, and from fornication. " But, notwith- 
standing the accommodation in which the writer of the 
Acts would have us believe, the Jerusalem Church held to 
its endeavor to retain the observance of the law. Long 
after the conference, some time after the writing of the 
Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, and immedi- 
ately after the dispatch of that to the Romans, Paul makes 
his last visit to Jerusalem, and presents himself to James 
and all the elders. And this is what the Acts tells us of 
the interview, — 

"And they said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how 
many thousands [or myriads] there are among the Jews 
of them which have believed ; and they are all zealous for 
the Law ; and they have been informed concerning thee, 
that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gen- 
tiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their 
children, neither to walk after the customs.'" (Acts xxi. 
20, 21.) They therefore request that he should perform 
a certain public religious act in the Temple, in order that 
"all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof 
they have been informed concerning thee ; but that thou 
thyself walkest orderly, keeping the Law." {Ibid, 24.) 



APPENDIX C. 145 

How far Paul could do what he is here requested to do, 
and which the writer of the Acts goes on to say he did, 
with a clear conscience, if he wrote the Epistles to the 
Galatians and Corinthians, I may leave the reader of those 
epistles to decide. The point to which I wish to direct 
attention is the declaration that the Jerusalem Church, led 
by the brother of Jesus and by his personal disciples and 
friends, twenty years after his death consisted of strict and 
zealous Jews. . . . 

Thus it appears that, if Justin's opinion, which was 
doubtless that of the Church generally in the middle of 
the second century, was correct, James and Peter and John 
and their followers could not be saved ; neither could Paul, 
if he carried into practice his views as to the indifference 
of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put the matter 
another way, the centre of gravity of orthodoxy, which is to 
the extreme right of the series in the nineteenth century, 
was at the extreme left just before the middle of the first 
century, when the " sect of the Nazarenes" constituted the 
whole church founded by Jesus and the Apostles ; while 
in the time of Justin, it lay midway between the two. It is, 
therefore, a profound mistake to imagine that the Judaeo- 
Christians (Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later times were 
heretical outgrowths from a primitive, universalist " Chris- 
tianity." On the contrary, the universalist " Christianity" 
is an outgrowth from the primitive, purely Jewish Naza- 
renism ; which, gradually eliminating all the ceremonial 
and dietary parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside its 
parent and all the intermediate stages of its development 



I46 APPENDIX D. 

into the position of damnable heresies. — T. H. Huxley, 
in The Nineteenth Century, April, 1889: Article, Rejoin- 
der, etc. 

D. 

There broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region, the 
greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations of " possession," 
an epidemic of dancing, jumping and wild raving. . . . 
The immediate origin of these manifestations seems to 
have been the wild revels of St. John's Day. In those 
revels sundry old heathen ceremonies had been perpetu- 
ated, but under a nominally Christian form ; wild Baccha- 
nalian dances had thus become a semi-religious ceremonial. 
The religious and social atmosphere was propitious to the 
development of the germs of diabolic influence vitalized 
in these orgies, and they were scattered far and wide 
through large tracts of the Netherlands and Germany, and 
especially through the whole region of the Rhine. At 
Cologne we hear of five hundred afflicted at once, at Metz 
of eleven hundred dancers in the streets, at Strasburg of 
yet more painful manifestations ; and from the greater 
cities they spread through the villages and rural dis- 
tricts. . . . 

In 1588 occurred in France a case which indicates the 
growth of this sceptical tendency [indicated in Montaigne's 
" Essays," published in 1580], even in the higher regions 
of the French Church. In that year Martha Brossier, a 
country girl, was, it was claimed, possessed of the devil. 
The young woman was, to all appearances, under direct 



APPENDIX D. 147 

Satanic influence. She roamed about, begging that the 
demon might be cast out of her; and her imprecations 
and blasphemies brought consternation wherever she went. 
Myth-making began on a large scale ; stories grew and 
spread. The Capuchin monks thundered from the pulpits 
throughout France regarding these proofs of the power of 
Satan. The alarm spread until at last even jovial, scepti- 
cal King Henry IV. was disquieted, and the reigning Pope 
was asked to take measures to ward off the evil. 

Fortunately, there then sat in the episcopal chair of 
Angers, a prelate who had apparently imbibed something 
of Montaigne's scepticism, — Miron ; and, when the case 
was brought before him, he submitted it to the most time- 
honored of sacred tests. He first brought into the girPs 
presence two bowls, one containing holy water, the other 
ordinary spring water, but allowed her to draw a false in- 
ference regarding the contents of each ; the result was 
that at the presentation of the holy water the devils were 
perfectly calm, but when tried with the ordinary water 
they threw Martha into convulsions. The next experiment 
made by the shrewd bishop was to similar purpose. He 
commanded loudly that a book of exorcisms should be 
brought, and, under a previous arrangement, his attend- 
ants brought him a copy of " Virgil. 1 ' No sooner had the 
bishop begun to read the first line of the "y£neid" than 
the devils threw Martha into convulsions. On another 
occasion a Latin dictionary, which she had reason to be- 
lieve was a book of exorcisms, produced a similar effect 
upon the devils. 



I48 APPENDIX D. 

Although the good bishop was thereby led to pronounce 
the whole matter a mixture of insanity and imposture, the 
Capuchin monks denounced this view as godless. They 
insisted that these tests really proved the presence of 
Satan, showing his cunning in covering up the proofs of 
his existence. The people at large sided with their preach- 
ers, and Martha was taken to Paris, where various exor- 
cisms were tried, and the Parisian mob became as devoted 
to her as they had been twenty years before to the mur- 
derers of the Huguenots, as they became two centuries 
later to Robespierre, and as they are at the present mo- 
ment to General Boulanger. 

But Bishop Miron was not the only sceptic. The 
Cardinal de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, charged the 
most eminent physicians of the city, among them Riolan, 
to report upon the case. Various examinations were made, 
and the verdict was that Martha was simply a hysterical 
impostor. Thanks, then, to medical science, and to these 
two enlightened ecclesiastics who summoned its aid, what 
fifty or a hundred years earlier would have been the centre 
of a wide-spread epidemic of possession was isolated, and 
hindered from producing a national calamity. 

But during the seventeenth century a theological reac- 
tion set in, not only in France, but in all parts of the Chris- 
tian w r orld, and the belief in diabolic possession, though 
certainly dying, flickered up hectic, hot and spiteful through 
the whole century. In 161 1 we have a typical case at Aix. 
An epidemic of possession having occurred there, Gauf- 
fridi, a man of note, was burned at the stake as the cause 



APPENDIX D. 149 

of the trouble. Michaelis, one of the priestly exorcists, 
declared that he had driven out six thousand five hundred 
devils from one of the possessed. Similar epidemics 
occurred in various parts of the world. 

Twenty years later a far more striking case occurred at 
Soudun, in Western France, where a convent of Ursuline 
nuns was " affected by demons. 11 The convent was filled 
mainly with ladies of noble birth, who, not having suffi- 
cient dower to secure husbands, had, according to the 
common method of the time, been made nuns, without 
any special regard to their feelings. ... One after another 
of the inmates fell into convulsions ; some showed physi- 
cal strength apparently supernatural ; some a keenness of 
perception quite as surprising ; many howled forth blas- 
phemies and obscenities. . . . 

Grandier, a neighboring priest, was charged with be- 
witching the young women. . . . Cardinal Richelieu caused 
another investigation. . . . Grandier, though even in the 
agony of torture he refused to confess, was hanged and 
burned. — Andrew D. White, LL.D., in The Popular 
Science Monthly, May, 1889: Article: "Diabolism and 
Hysteria.' 1 



During the siege of Vicksburg, the wife of a Confed- 
erate soldier was living with her parents in the interior of 
Mississippi. One night she had a vision in which she 
saw the fortification in which her husband was on duty. 
In front was an earthwork where the men were protected 



I50 APPENDIX D. 

from the fire of the enemy, but in rear was a rise of ground 
which was exposed to bullets. She saw her husband at- 
tempt to pass over this small eminence, saw him fall, and 
saw his companions carry him to an unexposed position, 
and there he died. She saw the preparations for burial, 
the coffin in which he was laid, distinctly noticed the knots 
and marks upon its unplaned lid, and all the sad details 
connected with his burial. The vision made such an im- 
pression upon her mind that she related the story to her 
family, and her father wrote down all the particulars as she 
saw them. She had not been in Vicksburg since it was 
invested, and consequently knew nothing of the situation 
of the works, and had received no letter from her husband 
from the time that the Federal forces closed around it. 
Several weeks afterwards Vicksburg surrendered, and the 
Confederates were paroled and returned to their homes. A 
young soldier, a friend of that other soldier, came home, 
and brought the news of his death ; and every incident 
connected with his taking off, the situation of the works, 
the manner in which he was shot, the circumstances of his 
interment, to the minutest detail, corresponded with the 
vision of his wife, as recorded by her father. — The (St. 
Louis) Spectator. 

A singularly tragical death was that of Alfred B. Hill, 
vice-president of the New York Stock Exchange. In the 
absence of the president, he was called upon to announce 
the death of Mr. DeRivas, a member. He endeavored to 
get some one else to make the announcement, but no one 



APPENDIX D. 151 

could be found who was willing to perform the duty that 
devolved upon himself. He went upon the rostrum, and 
pronounced a brief eulogy upon the deceased member. 
As the concluding sentence was completed, he fell to the 
floor, and a few minutes later expired. The event created 
a profound sensation, for Mr. Hill was the soul of business 
honor, and a favorite in social life. Now comes a strange 
story from Rev. Robert Laird Collier, with whom Mr. Hill 
was very intimate. To that gentleman Mr. Hill once said : 
" I confess to two superstitions: One is, that I will not 
live long after my mother dies ; and the other is, that if I 
am ever obliged, in my official capacity, to announce the 
death of a fellow member in the Exchange, the announce- 
ment will be only the prelude to my own death." About 
two weeks ago the news came to Mr. Hill from England, 
of his mother's death. A prophecy could not be more 
accurate than the one in which he described the events 
that were to precede so closely his own demise. 

These premonitions are not always reliable. The wife 
of a gentleman of our acquaintance was for years persuaded 
that her life would be like that of her grandmother, who 
died before reaching her thirty-fifth year. The circum- 
stances of her marriage had been similar, she had been 
afflicted with the same disease, her children numbered 
the same ; why should not the parallel be completed by 
her death at the same age? She computed to the day and 
the hour the time when her age would be that of her 
grandmother's. But on the day that was to be fatal, her 
husband arranged a diversion for her, and she forgot it 



152 APPENDIX D. 

entirely. When she thought of it again the time had 
passed, and though more than a year has since elapsed, 
she has never reverted to the subject. But had she 
brooded over the matter on the day to which she had 
looked forward with so much dread, the end might have 
been quite different. It is a fact that a man with a morbid 
imagination can commit slow suicide by brooding over 
such a possibility, especially if he has a diseased heart, 
which is not an uncommon possession, even among many 
who think their health excellent. Death is one of the in- 
cidents of life, and he is the happiest who can look for- 
ward to it as only the rounding up of an earthly existence. 
" We shall all die when our time comes,' 1 is pretty good phi- 
losophy after all, since it is the philosophy of perfect resig- 
nation. — The (Brookline) Chronicle. 



As to seeing in the dark, the following cases are well 
authenticated : (1) Dr. Seiler relates that a clergyman was 
one pitch-dark night attacked by a couple of foot-pads. 
One of them dealt him so violent a blow on the right eye 
that, owing to the surexcitation of the optic nerve, he was 
enabled to identify his assailants and bring them to jus- 
tice. (2) Suetonius, speaking of the Emperor Tiberius, 
says: "The expression of his face was noble; he had 
very large eyes with which, strange to say, he was able to 
see at night and in the dark, though only for a short time, 
and immediately on waking out of sleep ; they afterwards 
grew dim again. " (3) Cumenius relates the case of a 
young fiddler who received a sudden blow on his right eye 



APPENDIX D. 153 

by the snapping of one of the strings of his instrument. 
He suffered great pain, and on awaking the following 
night the bedroom appeared lighted up, and he could dis- 
tinctly trace the pattern of the wall paper ; on closing his 
right eye, all was dark again ; on reopening it, he saw as 
before. (4) Feuerbach reports the same of Caspar Hauser 
[dungeoned from his birth]. (5) Schlichtegroll, in his 
"Necrology of the Germans, " informs us that Dr. 
Michaelis in his later years could read at intervals in the 
dark. (6) Kustner says, in his " Archives of the Natural 
Sciences, 11 that he could generate sufficient light in his 
eyes to enable him, after one of his botanical excursions, 
to read, in the dark, a few passages from " Hoffman's 
Flora 11 to his pupils. (7) Siebenhaar declares in his 
M Handbook of Judicial Medicine, 11 that by rubbing and 
pressing his eyes he could obtain sufficient light to distin- 
guish the steps of the staircase. — The (Boston) Sattirday 
Evening Gazette. 

An African woman of the most pronounced type is 
doing a rushing business in faith cures in Nash County, 
N. C. All the roads in the vicinity are thronged with 
vehicles containing afflicted colored people flocking to her 
shrine. The woman, who is about thirty-two years old, 
cries aloud in a peculiar deep voice, exorcising the evil 
spirits of disease, imaginary or real. Then she anoints 
the applicants with water drawn from a well near by, at 
the same time requiring them to imbibe a portion. The 
spot, she claims, was pointed out to her by an angel. The 



154 APPENDIX D. 

woman fills bottles with water, blesses it, and these are 
carried off in countless numbers. She makes no charge 
but accepts whatever may be given her. Her house is 
crammed with patients, including many white people. — 
The Boston Journal. 

The principle is this : all the emotions produce a specific 
effect upon the small vessels, — capillaries, as they are 
called,. — which is seen in the face when people blush; 
the vessels become relaxed and full of blood, and the face 
red. All the exciting and most pleasurable emotions relax 
the capillaries : all depressing emotions, on the contrary, 
contract these vessels, which also is seen in the face when 
a man turns pale with fear. He is pale because the minute 
vessels do not contain so much blood. Now, the same 
effect that takes place on the surface of the body takes 
place in the inside, too ; in fact, it may take place in any 
and every part, and sometimes it does. 

This seems very little, but it is almost as vast as the 
whole range of human suffering ; for relaxation and con- 
traction of the capillaries are the essence of disease. It 
is inflammation, it is morbid deposit, it is pain, etc. Thus, 
you perceive, we see daily before our eyes emotion set- 
ting on foot those processes which constitute disease, and 
which also (for here is the point) constitute cure. 

Sir Astley Cooper published in his lectures (thirty years 
ago) that the only cause he could discover for cancer was 
mental distress ; and that, he was sure, would produce it. 
The whole medical world has read those lectures since. 



APPENDIX D. 155 

And yet, now, go to a medical man and tell him that a 
cancer has been cured by the production of emotions, and 
he will laugh at you. . . . 

If a person loses too much blood, he has a headache, 
which is due to there being too little blood in the brain 
and the vessels, accordingly, too much contracted. . . . 
What is the cure? Of course, to relax them. And how 
shall we do that ? One way will immediately occur to you ; 
namely, to produce a cheerful emotion, which, as you 
know, is seen to relax the vessels. Suppose we excite 
hope, is not the thing done? Give the patient a globule, 
perhaps. . . . 

My most pleasing anticipation is that I shall certainly 
reconcile allopaths and homoeopaths, if I can prove to 
them (as I think I can by a chain of evidence quite irre- 
sistible) that they have been both curing people all the 
while by the very same power, — which power is precisely 
the same as that by which our much-calumniated fore- 
fathers cured their patients, with charms and incantations ; 
and that they have been quarrelling all the while about a 
name, a whim, a mere fancy. Then, I think, they will 
never find it possible to go on quarrelling any more. 
Especially, when it must be evident that both are in error, 
that the allopath now and then prevents his patient from 
recovering by an over-exhibition of physic, and the homoe- 
opath consigns a victim to eternity occasionally by with- 
holding from him the means which God designed for his 
cure, and for which our instincts irrepressively long. — 
The Life and Letters of fames Hint on. London, 1851. 



I56 APPENDIX D. 

The influence of the imagination is illustrated by the 
following incident furnished by a Chicago physician. A 
big hulking fellow got the notion that he was to die at 
eleven o'clock on a certain day. The doctor was sent for, 
and arrived just fifteen minutes before the crank intended 
to die. He looked like a man on the verge of eternity. 
His eyes were dim and sunken, his face had that peculiar 
pallor which heralds the near approach of death, and his 
breathing was very labored. The family were gathered 
around, and weeping as they took a final leave. Some- 
thing had to be done quickly. Calling a smart-looking 
woman aside, the doctor told her to set the clock on the 
mantelpiece ahead as soon as he got the attention of the 
patient. He then hustled the family out of the' room, sat 
down on the edge of the bed, and began telling the fellow 
a blood-curdling murder story, locating it in the town 
where he knew everybody, and so completely interested 
him that he forgot about his eleven o'clock appointment. 
M When I gave him a chance to look again," relates the 
doctor, " it was twenty minutes to twelve, and he was 
actually mad for a time, claiming that he had been tricked. 
He finally got to laughing, and we all took dinner together. 
The next day he whipped two men at a barn-raising for 
twitting him about the programme of death that mis- 
carried. 11 — The [Chicago] Ti7Jies, 



W. H. Bulkley, the Ouincy-street harness maker of faith- 
cure fame, and W. R. Torrey, his co-laborer, returned 
Saturday from Watertown, Wis., where, since Oct. 16, 



APPENDIX D. 157 

they have held a series of meetings for the purpose of cur- 
ing the sick, and making converts to the Free Methodist 
faith. They speak enthusiastically of their success in per- 
forming cures, many of which, as described by them, are 
of a truly marvellous nature. They report a total of eight 
hundred and fourteen persons cured, among whom were 
residents of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and 
Michigan. Toward the close of the series of meetings, it 
was necessary to issue tickets of admission to the church, 
so great was the crowd collected there day and night. 
Mr. Torrey, previous to presenting a list of persons cured, 
told how twenty-six persons had been cured by sending 
their handkerchiefs up to Bulkley, who, by returning them 
to the senders, thus transmitted to them the healing power. 
This was done where it was impossible for people desiring 
to be cured to approach the platform. By way of con- 
vincing the sceptics, a hundred and sixteen were cured 
through the instrumentality of green leaves given by 
Bulkley to diseased men and women, who, announcing 
their instant cure as by a miracle, created an amount of 
confidence which no number of sceptical individuals could 
overthrow. Others, having touched the hem of Bulkley's 
garment, announced themselves instantly cured. — Dis- 
patch from Chicago, 111., Nov. 10, 1884, to The Boston 
Herald. 

There is an old negro in the county, it is said, whose 
touch will drive away warts, heed cancers, and cure in- 
stantaneously the worst cases of rheumatism. Reliable 



158 APPENDIX D. 

people inform us that several severe cases of disease have 
been cured by the simple laying-on of his hands on the 
affected parts. One old gentleman, who, by the way, is one 
of our best citizens, is troubled with the periodical appear- 
ance of a cancer on his face, and for years has been under 
the treatment of this colored prodigy. On these occa- 
sions, when the cancer becomes inflamed, our friend goes 
immediately to the negro, and has him to rub it ; and soon 
after it disappears, leaving no trace of its former existence, 
save a little dry scab. — The Warrenton (Ga.) Clipper. 



Without any affirmation or denial of " miracles," there 
is one way of accounting for the cures reported from 
Boston, from Lourdes, from Paris, and just now by Canon 
Wilberforce. May we not be on the track of some notable 
discovery as to the influence of the mind over the body? 
The late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, a very sceptical and un- 
imaginative man, records in one of his scientific works a 
singular incident of impressionability. A lady saw a heavy 
window-sash falling on the fingers of her child. She 
screamed, but she was too late ; the little fingers were 
terribly bruised. But as she took up and soothed the 
sufferer she saw that her own fingers were bruised exactly 
in the same way. The mental impression produced a 
physical result. When a blush comes to a boy's or girl's 
face as the result of a word or a thought, we seem to have 
a milder form of the same thing, and the birthmarks on 
newly-born children, the consequence of some fright suf- 
fered by the mother months before, are indications of 



APPENDIX D. 159 

similar susceptibility. Dr. Carpenter also records how 
a man prisoned in his chair for ten years by a paralytic 
attack rose and rushed up stairs on hearing of the sudden 
illness of his favorite child. Here we had what would 
be called a miracle if it had been preceded by prayer. 
The question is, How far does intense mental expectancy 
account for some of the cases of cure recorded in modern 
times? If a man is told by a Boston healer, a French 
priest, or a Parisian doctor that at a certain day and 
hour he may look for a change, does the mind triumph 
over the bodily ailment and disperse it? Both patients 
and physicians are well aware that quite apart from their 
drugs some doctors seem to bring healing with them. 
Their presence is more potential than their prescriptions. 
Is this magnetism, or does the mind of the patient, acted 
upon by the genial strength of his physician, work out the 
cure? It is also certain that sometimes when the regular 
doctor retires, a man called a quack will produce a result. 
Does he do so by eliciting faith — by making the patient 
believe that he is going to be cured? The " faith healers" 
begin their process, according to American accounts, by 
telling the patients that they are victims to a delusion ; 
they are not ill at all ; it is a diseased fancy, nothing more. 
So the invalid walks across the room wherein for months 
he fancied himself powerless. In regular practice, physi- 
cians frequently meet with the curious phenomena of simu- 
lated disease. A hysterical girl assures her doctor that 
her right knee is so tender she cannot bear even the pres- 
sure of a thin sheet, and if he attempts to touch it she 



l60 APPENDIX D. 

screams aloud in what seems agony — and is to her real 
though purely mental pain. If, however, the doctor can 
get her attention diverted he can press unseen, with all 
his force, on the seat of the imaginary disorder, and inflict 
no suffering. The moral of all the facts would seem to 
be that medical men should neglect no department of their 
art, and that it is their business to study the minds as 
well as the bodies of their patients, for in the occult con- 
nection between the two may lie the secret of all the ages. 
— The London Telegraph. 



When Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, had completed his 
work On Triith as distinguished front Revelation} he was 
filled with doubt whether its publication would contribute 
to the glory of God, and threw himself upon his knees to 
entreat his guidance : " Give me a sign from heaven, or if 
not, I will suppress my book! " " I had scarcely uttered 
these words," says he, "-when a distinct yet gentle sound, 
unlike any earthly one, came from heaven. " — Dr. C. E. 
Luthardt, Apologetic Lectures (4th Eng. Ed.), p. 16. 



Concerning the late Charles Foster's experiences there 
are said to be well attested vouchers in possession of Mrs. 
M. L. Foster, 14 William Street, Salem, Mass. For a 
statement of the "induction theory" of the transmission 

1 De Veritate pro-ut distinguitur a Revelatione a verisimili, 
a possibili et a /also, A.D. 1648. (Providence seems to have 
kept at least the title from oblivion.) 



APPENDIX D. l6l 

of thought to Charles Foster, Stuart Cumberland, Irving 
Bishop, and others, see The Life of Lives, etc., p. 225. 



Praise eats into one like rust. Rebuke is a furnace that 
smelts out the alloy. No doubt our men have been cruel to 
our women, but let it be understood that foreign rule for 
the last eighteen hundred years has been the main cause 
of it. It is neither the effect of native religious rules, nor 
the effect of native social regulations. During the Hindu 
period, men and women enjoyed equal rights in every 
respect ; while in Christendom — or rather in Paulendom 
— Paul put his thumb at the throat of woman, and the 
consequence was that for full eighteen centuries the women 
of Europe were treated with more cruelty and with less 
respect than the men of India are now thought to show. 
Christ never taught the inferiority of women nor restricted 
the rights of women in any way. It took one hundred 
years for the elevation of the women of the West. Slow 
East will perhaps take double that time ; but the general 
and hearty co-operation of the enlightened womanhood of 
America, and the self-sacrifice of ladies like you, are sure 
signs of a miraculous change. — S. Govinda Rau Sattay, 
in his letter of Oct. 1, 1888, to Mrs. Caroline Healey Dall, 
the Unitarian missionary. 



Supplementary to matter in Chapter XIX. (on the phil- 
osophy of prayer according with law) may well be added 
the following recent elucidation : — 



1 62 APPENDIX D. 

As between the earth and sun God has decreed certain 
conditions to be observed in order to develop earth's 
products, so between man and man, and man and his 
Creator, there are conditions to be complied with in order 
to develop the fruits of mind. First among these, inhe- 
rent and imperative in man, is the desire to reciprocate 
ideas ; and this desire must be complied with, else would 
ideas cease, and all communion, all sympathy, all progress 
come to an end. 

From whom, then, we ask, do we inherit this irresistible 
principle of attraction and reciprocity ? Are we not God's 
children, and do we not receive our instincts from him in 
whose image we are made? Or, having created, quick- 
ened, and united by his own spirit all mankind, has he 
severed the electric cord, cut himself aloof, and closed 
every avenue to communication, to sympathy? Dark and 
drear is our condition, if it be true that, though we thirst 
for the pure water of life, gushing from a living spring, we 
may ask indeed, but be permitted to draw only from cis- 
terns, — " broken cisterns that can hold no water." 

Rather may we not infer that the sympathy between the 
earthly parent and child, quickened and strengthened by 
obedience and love, but rendered powerless by indiffer- 
ence and disobedience, is but a faint type of the connect- 
ing responsive tie that unites the child to the heavenly 
parent ; and as love for the earthly parent will seek and 
receive confidence through some communicative channel, 
even so toward the heavenly. Aspirations arising from 
depths of sincere desire and affection will find language, it 



APPENDIX D. 163 

matters not whether mental or verbal ; and the assistance 
received in answer to petitions for daily bread, for spiritual 
growth and increased affections, is as real as that received 
by vegetation from the natural sun, and as dependent upon 
the condition of the mind as the other is upon that of the 
earth, as real as the mutual confidence inspired by human 
sympathies. — " E. S.,' 1 in The Christian Register. 



Supplementary to matter in Chapter XXVI. (on pro- 
phecy) may well be added the following : — 

In ancient days prophecy meant, not foretelling future 
events, but forthtelling all the truth one was capable of dis- 
cerning. . . . Jesus was the last of the old Hebrew 
prophets. All he said and all he did was but a blossom- 
ing forth into fuller flower and grander fruitfulness of the 
ancient prophetic spirit. . . . "Looking unto Jesus' 1 
did not mean believing any dogma about him ; it simply 
meant considering him as the freshest example given to 
the world of that faithfulness to truth even unto death 
which had characterized the great national heroes. . . . 
" Let us lay aside every weight" that hinders us from mak- 
ing actual in the world those ideals of love and liberty and 
virtue for which the fathers lived, and from which they did 
not when needful shrink to die. — James K. Applebee, 
in a discourse on Heb. xii. 1. 



Rev. J. Henry Skewes, Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, 
Liverpool, is said to have recently written a book showing 
that the discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin was 



1 64 APPENDIX D. 

achieved by Captain McClintock in 1857, through dis- 
closures made in 1849 by the apparition of a deceased 
child of Captain Coppin of Londonderry to her sister 
(who is still living), and by Captain Coppin forwarded 
to Lady Franklin. 

Supplementary to matter in Chapter X., — that "we 
are saved by hope," even though most of life's hopes be 
illusory, — the following quaint little poem recently from 
the pen of James Whitcomb Riley, entitled "A Life 
Lesson" presents a picture more solacing than sombre. 
If at a superficial glance it seem puerile, let the reader 
" look within" and discern somewhat of the style of Him 
who "blessed them." "Men and women are but chil- 
dren of a larger growth." 

" There ! little girl ; don't cry ! 

They have broken your doll, I know; 
And your tea-set blue, 
And your play-house, too, 
Are things of the long ago ; 
But childish troubles will soon pass by. 
There ! little girl ; don't cry ! 

" There ! little girl ; don't cry ! 

They have broken your slate, I know ; 
And the glad, wild ways 
Of your school-girl days 
Are things of the long ago ; 
But life and love will soon come by. 
There ! little girl ; don't cry ! 



APPENDIX D. I65 

" There ! little girl ; dorft cry ! 

They have broken your heart, I know. 
And the rainbow gleams 
Of your youthful dreams 
Are things of the long ago ; 
But heaven holds all for which you sigh. 
There ! little girl ; don't cry ! " 

Supplementary to matter in Chapter XXVII. may well 
be added the following poetic gem entitled "Beyond, 1 ' 
from the pen of Henry Burton : — 

" Never a word is said 

But it trembles in the air, 
And the truant voice has sped 
To vibrate everywhere ; 
And perhaps far off in eternal years 
The echo may ring upon our ears. 

" Never are kind acts done 
To wipe the weeping eyes, 
But like flashes of the sun, 
They signal to the skies ; 
And up above the angels read 
How we have helped the sorer need. 

" Never a day is given 

But it tones the after years, 
And it carries up to heaven 
Its sunshine or its tears ; 
While the to-morrows stand and wait, 
The silent mutes by the outer gate. 



l66 APPENDIX D. 

" There is no end to the sky, 

And the stars are everywhere, 
And time is eternity, 

And the here is over there ; 
For the common deeds of the common day 
Are ringing bells in the Far- Away." 

Also the following anonymously quoted by Rev. Charles 
B. Elder in his sermon on the text, " Be ye also ready," 
preached in the Hawes Church, South Boston, soon after 
the Johnstown disaster : — 

" Why need I seek some burden small to bear 

Before I go? 
Will not a host of noble souls be here, 

God's will to do ? 
Men of strong hands, unfailing, unafraid? 

anxious soul ! what matters my small aid 

Before I go? 

" I tried to find, beneath earth's shadows grim, 

Before I go, 
The path of Christ's pure life. The light was dim ; 

I do not know 
If I have found e'en foot-prints of the way. 

1 searched with zeal, I can in good sooth say 

Before I go. 

" I sought through nature truth to find ; I said, 
' Before I go, 



APPENDIX D. 167 

If I might help in the good Master's stead 

God's thought to show.' 
But I was weak ; ofttimes I missed the way. 
Men need a stouter guide ; for that I pray 

Before I go. 

" Would I might sing the world some song of cheer 

Before I go ! 
But still the chords ring false ; some jar of fear, 

Some jangling woe. 
The saddest is I cannot weave one chord 
To float into their hearts my last warm word, 

Before I go. 

" I would be satisfied if I might tell 

Before I go, 
That one warm word, — How I have loved them well, 

Ah, loved them so ! 
And would have done for them some little good ; 
Have sought it long — still seek if but I could 

Before I go. 

" 'Tis a child's longing on the beach at play. 

' Before I go,' 
He begs the beckoning mother, * let me stay 

One shell to throw ! ' 
'Nay! night comes on, the great sea climbs the shore.' 
' Oh, let me toss one little pebble more, 

Before I £0.' n 



1 And since, by Passion's force subdued, 

Too oft with stubborn will 
We blindly shun the latent good, 

And grasp the specious ill, 
Not what we wish, but what we want, 

Let Mercy still supply : 
The good unasked, Father, grant; 

The ill, though asked, deny." 



" All that I feel of pity thou hast known 
Before I was; my best is all thy own: 
From thy great heart of goodness mine but drew 
Wishes and prayers; but thou, Lord, wilt do 
In thy own time, by ways I cannot see, 
All that I feel when I am nearest thee." 



E 



THE 



Prayer of the Presidents 



WASHINGTON'S 



" New- Year Afpiration," 



ADDITIONS BY LINCOLN AND OTHERS. 



A NEW-YEAR ASPIRATION. 



OUR Father who art the infinite Soul over 
all, around all and in us all : 
Although we know that thou doft govern the 
world by uncapricious law, and that thou, being 
all-wife and all-good, needeft no fupplication of 
ours to remind thee of us — to teach thee our 
wants, or to ftir thy parental tendernefs toward 
us — yet we alfo know that zue do need to re- 
mind ourfelves of thee; that we often muft 
need turn to thee as doth a helplefs infant to 
the fheltering arms of its parent, — 

"An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry ; " l 

that we, as if inftinctively, clutch and cling to 
the Rock that is higher than we, in our grop- 

3 



ings and our yearnings for fome reliable refuge, 
fome fure fhield, fome fatisfying folace to the 
wants and the woes of this world : 

" To thee we pray, for all muft live by thee." 2 

We know too that thou haft ordained that 
the foul muft crave good in order to get good, 
— muft hunger and thirft after rightnefs to be 
filled — to be fquared with wifdom, ftrength and 
beauty; that thou haft fo created us that "as a 
man thinketh and feeleth, fo is he," 3 — that as 
is the fpirit and extent of one's habitual con- 
templations and quefts fo muft his or her foul 
expand and be exalted, or ficken, flirivel and 
grovel, — his or her joys blight in inanition and 
perifh, or bloom and endure "unto everlafting 
life.' , 4 

We realize too that fpiritual good is the only 
permanent good ; that 

"'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone, 
Amid life's pains, abafements, emptinefs, 
The foul can comfort, elevate and fill." 5 

Hence now a while we fufpend all merely 
ephemeral concerns, and, retiring hither with 



5 

unity of fympathy, together ftruggle to rife 
from our feeblenefs and our darknefs unto thee 
who art " the light of all our being, the ftrength 
of all that is ftrong, the wifdom of what is wife, 
and the foundation of all things that are." 6 
And while we breathe upward the prayer of 
fervent afpiration, or ftrain forward with new 
hope upon the reft of our probation, or glance 
backward with fond or fad retrofpection, con- 
trition fofteneth our hearts, and gratitude muft 
need dwell upon our tongues. 

To deepen the penitence of "a broken and 
contrite heart which, O God, thou wilt not de- 
fpife," 7 we would confider the many manifefta- 
tions of thy good will toward us, " the multitude 
of thy tender mercies," and all the felicities 
of our focial life in this goodly heritage from 
the Chriftian forefathers and mothers who 
bequeathed us "unftained freedom to worfhip 
God ; " a heritage preferved and amplified by 
the ftatefmen, the warriors, the fcientifts, the 
forthtellers and the other factors infpired by 
thee in the production of national good charac- 
ter. 



Although we have fome light afflictions, we 
would view our momentary troubles as refults 
of limitations thou haft fixed in our conftitu- 
tions for difcipline of character. 

" And not a grief can darken or furprife, 
Swell in the heart or fill with tears our eyes, 
But it is fent in mercy and in love, 
To bid our helpleffnefs feek ftrength above." 6 

Yet we would not idly dream that the attain- 
ment of fpiritual ftrength, peace, and comfort 
is any merely fupernatural matter. We would 
admonifh ourfelves that 

" Not enjoyment, and not forrow, 
Is our deftined end or way; " 

that impulfe — emotion — ecftafy — hath no 
moral merit ; that only right volition determines 
duty, in the race for eternal life, 

" So to act that each to-morrow 
Find us further than to-day; " 

that each good difpofition muft not only be 
implanted from above, but be cultivated, — our- 
felves muft " ceafe to do evil, learn to do well ; " 9 
learn, if wandering from Wifdom's ways, to 



welcome to our fouls the defolation of the prodi- 
gal fon among the hufks, and difcern that the 
confequent wretchednefs cometh of thy benefi- 
cence. 

Nor would we be oblivious of the bleffings to 
us accruing from toil and trials of remoter bene- 
factors, down along the ages of thine evolution 
of humanity's moft facred ideals ; but, for what 
thou haft done for us through the world's glo- 
rious martyrs in every good caufe, be devoutly 
thankful to thee and to them, efpecially to 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 

We would admonifh ourfelves that all our 
ferious troubles come of our not keeping our 
fouls imbued with the holy fpirit of our great 
GUIDE AND TEACHER. Would that we 
might never forget that the only way of life is 
HIS way, — his method, 

" Self-introfpection deep, to catch and hold 
Communion holy with the higher felf ; " I0 

his means, 



"A conftant dying for to live true life, 
Renouncing all of lower felf untrue 
And infubordinate to higher felf ; " " 



8 



exercifing all the propenfities wherewith thou 
haft endowed us, but perverting none : loving 
but not lax ; cheerful " with them that do re- 
joice," I2 but 

" With moderation dominating all 
Precipitately flippant levity ; " I3 

reticent and repreffed fo long as we fliould be 
"fwift to hear, flow to fpeak," I4 but never, 
through fear of fome unmagnanimous critic's 
imputation of loquacity, tardy to let our light 
twinkle and communicate whenever duty's occa- 
fion fhall fuggeft that there will 

" So fhine a good deed in a naughty world ; " IS 

flow to wrath againft poffibly inadvertent tref- 
paffes, but fwift to hear of oppreffion and rectify 
evil doings ; eager to imitate " whatfoever things 
are decent, lovely and of good report " for recrea- 
tion, but never in mirth " to hold the mirror" I5 
of mimicry up to feeming eccentricity unlefs to 
fhew as we would be fliown, or 

" To minifter 
Fit medicine to minds by care diftraught; " 6 



fober but not fombre or afcetic ; reverent but 
not fuperftitious ; direct of dealing and of dic- 
tion, but, like JESUS 

" In parable in converfe with a throng 
Enthralled by demonology derived 
From Babylon, e'er condefcending well 
To ftudy all the fpirit of the age, 
And utilize its mental furniture, 
E'en though its folk-lore, phantafy-bewitched 
And wild bedevilled, feem to freer thought 
Mere heir-loom rubbifh drifted down the ftream 
Of time from earth's child races cherilhing 
Barbaric myths." 6 

Would that we might fofter faith — fidelity 
to conviction — but never, through intellectual 
indolence, lapfe into the credulity which ignores 
to diftinguifh between the function of faith and 
the province of reafon, and to analyze incre- 
ments of tradition. We would meekly bow to 
folemn myfteries — whatever furpaffes our rea- 
fon — but vigilantly combat abfurdities — what- 
ever contradicts and infults reafon. We would 
ftand up militant with moral courage againft all 
pernicious new fafhions, but warily firft caft out 
of our own eye that refractive prejudice againft 



IO 



reformatory innovation upon " traditions of the 
elders " l6 — that pharifaifm — which JESUS 
was wont to denounce even at peril of his 
precious earthly life. We would be hofpitable 
to " truth for authority " *7 — 

"Loyal to truth e'en when her crown is thorns " I8 — 

but jealoufly fcrutinize any partifan platforms 
or creed-fabrics proffered us by chief priefts, 
political fcribes or other benevolent zealots as 
" authority for truth." 1? Yea, verily, we would 
ufe all our faculties but abufe none of them. 

" We afk not that for us the plan 
Of good and ill be fet afide, 
But that the common lot of man 
Be nobly borne and glorified." l9 

And although fuch felf-fubordination in the 
exercife of the intellect, the fenfibilities and 
the will may coft us unremitting forecaft and 
circumfpection, and weary reminder that 

" There is care and ftruggle in every life, 
But no ftrength cometh without the ftrife," 



II 

may we never fhrink from the complete felf- 
furrender, the obedience to the law of our being, 
indifpenfable to that equipoife in the a6lion of 
the foul's forces negledtful non - maintenance 
whereof conftitutes fin. 

" We want a principle within 
Of jealous, godly fear, 
A fenfibility of fin, 

A pang to find it near; " 2 ° 

a foul not calloufed but fublimed by forrow. 
We want falvation — 

" Salvation from our felfifhnefs, 
From more than elemental fire, 
The foul's unfanclified defire, 
From fin itfelf and not the pain 
That warns us of its chafing chain." 21 

Thus guarding " the fountain " 22 — right fpir- 
itual condition — may we keep pure the ftream, 
the current of conduct of our probation. O that 
the weeds and thorns of the world may not 
choke the growth of our graces, our develop- 
ment of reverence, gentlemanlinefs, gentle- 
womanlinefs, fweetnefs and light, even the 



12 



divinely fweet reafonablenefs, the "grace and 
truth, the glory beheld" 2 * in JESUS! Efpe- 
cially his divinely fweet fympathy 

" Where'er a human heart doth wear 
Joy's myrtle wreath or forrow's gyves, 
Where'er a human fpirit ftrives 
After a life more true and fair." 24 

Thus may we fulfil thy creative purpofe, 
evolving fubjective harmony with our objective 
moral environment — 

" Such harmony between immortal fouls 
Grofs clofed in muddy vefture of decay; " I5 

thus " dwell together in unity " with our brother 
men, reconciling our interefts to theirs, bearing 
patiently with their weaknefs or rejoicing in 
their ftrength ; thus appreciate 

" How grand in age, how fair in youth, 
Are holy friendfhip, love and truth." 

Thus may we ftrive to haften the day when 
all men fhall recognize thee as their father, and 
own JESUS lord of their hearts. Thus may 



13 

our fouls come into at-one-ment with HIS and 
with thee, to be nevermore bewildered by temp- 
tation or blinded by unreafon ; nevermore 

"The foul, like barque with rudder loft, 
On paffion's changeful tide be toft;" 25 

nevermore beguiled by vain pomp or other im- 
pofing concomitant of kingcraft ; nevermore 

" O'erworried left the lucre fly away, 
Or trembling at fome Jova's fancied fpite, 
Extraneous interceflion begging loud," 6 

but the foul ftand 

" Without a fret at fortune's laggard pace," 6 

and ferene in being 

" Thoroughly fortified 
By acquiefcence in the Will Supreme 
For time and for eternity." 26 

Let each of us, in reviewing his or her ex- 
perience of the fwiftly gliding years, feel that 



14 



" So long thy power hath bleft me, fure it ftill 

Will lead me on 
Through dreary doubt, through pain and forrow till 

The night is gone, 
And with the morn thofe angel faces fmile 
Which I have loved long fince and loft awhile." 27 

Thus, come whatever trials and come what- 
ever enemies, may we make them our allies 
toward affimilating our difpofition to that of 
JESUS, the pure in heart, until we be bleffed 
to "lee God ;" till thine own truth illumine our 
underftanding, thy juftice abide fupreme in our 
confcience, and thy love be a beatitude in our 
hearts forever. Thus in this realization — that 

" Bane and bleffmg, pain and pleafure 
By the crofs are fanctified, 
Peace is there that knows no meafure, 
Joys that through all time abide," 28 — 

let come to us thy kingdom of peace on earth, 
and fo be done thy good will. 
Be all our addrefs to thee — 

"To thee, the foul's Ideal 
Of all the fpiritually real" 6 — 



15 

as difciples of HIM who taught us to call thee 
Our Father, and gave us the afpiration : 

" As greets the heart with gratitude 
Each bleffing hallowed and renewed, 
Be infpiration from above 
To newer fweetnefs, light and love 
And whatfoever may incite 
To wifdom, juftice, truth and right. 

As be another's faults forgiven, 
Forgiven be own tortious fin ; 

Away temptation's wiles be driven 
As evil thinking not begin. 
So may the fpirit meekly fhine 
A kindled fpark from foul divine, 
And fo, in JESUS' love, be given 
Faith, peace and patience, hope and heaven/' 29 

Amen. 



i6 



NOTES. 



1 A. Tennyfon. 2 J. Wefley. 3 Prov. xxiii. 7. 4 John, vi. 
27 s E. Young. 6 Anonymoufly quoted by Prefident Lin- 
coln, perhaps from T. Parker. 7 Ps. li. 7. 8 J. Newton. 9 If. 
i. 17. IO Matt. vi. 6; Luke, ix. 18. " M. Arnold. I2 Rom. 
xii. 15. I3 Phil. iv. 5. u James, i. 19. I5 W. Shakfpere. 
16 Matt. xv. 3. I7 L. Mott. 18 C. S. Burnham. l 9 P. Cary. 
20 C. Wefley. 2I J. G. Whittier. 22 James, iii. n. 23 John, 
i. 14. 24 ]. R. Lowell. 25 W. Scott. 2b W. Wordfworth. 
27 J. H. Newman. 28 J. Bowering. 2 9 See "The Life of 
Lives," pp. 200, 217. 



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